Bodies Are Fluid is the first in a series of exhibitions over the coming semesters that celebrate women, femmes, and the feminine at the Allen Memorial Art Museum. Like most art collections, the Allen’s formed around deceptively neat categories that are both art historical—Realism, Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism—and based on social groups and identities—man/woman, religious/secular, young/old, fat/skinny. This intergenerational constellation of artworks presents a capacious spectrum of individuals and experiences that the “isms” of art have long failed to grasp.

Many of the art practices represented in this exhibition emerged amid second-wave feminism, a movement that largely neglected the intersections of sex discrimination with race, class, and gender diversity. For more than a century, Black feminists—from Mary Church Terrell (OC 1884) to bell hooks (OC professor 1988 to 1994)—have shown how those forces of oppression are interlocking and compounding. This exhibition suggests a reassessment of feminist artmaking with a commitment to learning from intersectional femininities that are nonwhite and non-cis-heteronormative.

Related events

Mar 8

March 8, 2023 at 12:15 p.m.

Curator Tour of Femme ’n isms, Part I: Bodies Are Fluid

Join us for a curator-led tour with Sam Adams, Ellen Johnson ’33 Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the All...