Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is pleased to announce 18 Women: 50 Years, a group exhibition of some of the most innovative artists of the twentieth century, each of whom has been integral to the gallery’s thirty-five-year history. On view from November 19, 2024 through January 25, 2025, the presentation features over forty works in painting, sculpture, collage, assemblage, ceramic, and textile produced between 1918 and 1968 by Magdalena Abakanowicz, Ruth Asawa, Mary Bauermeister, Lee Bontecou, Claire Falkenstein, Nancy Grossman, Blanche Lazzell, Louise Nevelson, Agnes Pelton, Irene Rice Pereira, Anne Ryan, Betye Saar, Esphyr Slobodkina, Toshiko Takaezu, Lenore Tawney, Alma Thomas, Charmion von Wiegand, and Claire Zeisler. In the spirit of the large group exhibitions of vanguard artists organized by legendary curator Dorothy C. Miller at the Museum of Modern Art, 18 Women: 50 Years provides a representative showing of each featured artist and, collectively, a survey of the women artists consistently championed by the gallery’s program.
Though much progress has been made in contextualizing women artists within the larger narrative of twentieth-century art, 18 Women: 50 Years seeks to emphasize the diversity of practices among the artists on view. Featuring traditional oil-on-canvas paintings, radically nontraditional found-object assemblages, as well as a rich selection of works executed in mediums traditionally designated as craft and unjustly excluded from fine art settings, the presentation highlights the originality of these artists’ conceptual, material, and stylistic approaches. Each featured artist asserted a singular voice within the arena of modernism and its descendants while resisting the patriarchal strictures of the creative and institutional circles in which they moved. Bringing together standout works representative of a range of movements and milieus, 18 Women: 50 Years provides a vivid summary of these artists’ incomparable contributions to the history of twentieth-century art.