Visible Places: Works on Paper by Women

July 5–November 9, 2008

This summer, the San Diego Museum of Art hosts an exceptional array of exhibitions that focus on women artists. Included in this selection is Visible Places: Works on Paper by Women, an exhibition that investigates the contributions of women artists, emphasizing the dual and often contradictory roles women have played within the private and public spheres over the last hundred years.

This exhibition showcases works from the early- to the mid-twentieth century—many of them presented for the first time—and offers a historical framework that allows visitors to consider how artistic styles changed over time, as well as reflect upon the active participation of women in the social and political currents of the period. Among the artists presented are Mary Cassatt, Käthe Kollwitz, Isabel Bishop, and Barbara Hepworth.

In addition, this exhibition also includes a section titled Spatial Gestures: New Acquisitions, 2006–2008, which focuses on abstract works by contemporary women artists. Artists such as Mary Heilmann, Julie Mehretu, and Pat Steir use the sometimes modest means of drawing and printmaking to express dimensions of scale and forces in nature.

While some artists in Spatial Gestures illustrate large natural forces such as cosmological configurations or the shape and circulation of the winds, others make visible their investigations into nature in a more diminutive or subtle register, depicting, for example, a leaf or the tonal gradation of a stone slab.

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