Methods and Materiality: Women Artists Working with Abstraction

This installation occurred in the past. The archival installation summary below describes the installation as it was conceived while on view.

Methods and Materiality: Women Artists Working with Abstraction showcases abstract work made by innovative women artists from the 1960s to the 2000s, highlighting the artmaking process itself as a subject of the work. Using unconventional materials like salvaged wood, spray paint, paper-punched stencils, and sprayed metals to expand understandings of materiality, these artists made important and lasting contributions to the conceptual development of contemporary art history.

Artists such as Julie Mehretu and Louise Nevelson combined abstract compositions with materials and shapes that reference the urban environment. Teresita Fernández employed industrial materials to address perceptions of the natural world. Helen Frankenthaler and Howardena Pindell created nuanced abstractions in which a paintbrush never touched the canvas, challenging ideas of what constitutes a painting.

The artists whose work is on view in Methods and Materiality often employed Minimalism’s formal elements to examine legacies of so-called women’s work, such as textiles and decorative arts, shifting the narrative of the male-dominated art world of the time.

Methods and Materiality: Women Artists Working with Abstraction is curated by Hannah Klemm, associate curator of modern and contemporary art, and Molly Moog, research assistant for modern and contemporary art.

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