Reimagining the Distaff Toolkit

Reimagining the Distaff Toolkit, an exhibition that explores household tools as metaphor for the social and cultural histories of women embedded in them.

Rickie Solinger, an award-winning author, historian and curator, reexamines women’s history by positioning tools used in a domestic setting as the “fulcrum for a contemporary work of art.” She says, “The artists in this exhibit

place these old tools at the center of their own work: washboard, a dressmaker’s dummy, graters, doilies, an advice book, cooking pans, a basket, a garden hoe, dress patterns, a rolling pin, buckets, darning eggs, a work glove, a needle threader, rug beaters, ironing boards, mason jars and a telephone.”

The term “distaff” itself refers not only to the tool attached to a spinning wheel to hold unspun fibers, but over time, came to refer to women generally.  Solinger points out, “Many of these old tools facilitated….repetitive labor and evoke the various cultural histories of women’s unpaid, often diminished and disrespected status within the household and society. But in the 21^st century, at a moment when ‘old tools’ have become aestheticized and expensive, we can look again and see their costly beauty.”

Twenty-eight artists are represented in this show including Betye and Alison Saar, Lisa Alvarado, Dave Cole, Judy Hoyt, Larry Ruhl, Flo Oy Wong, Debra Priestly, to name a few.

Founded on the idea that art should be a part of daily life, Burt Chernow, an art historian, established the Housatonic Museum of Art (HMA) in 1967. Over the course of forty years, he built a significant collection of more than 4,000 objects, a portion of which are on display throughout our 300,000 square foot facility. The collection includes significant examples of art from every part of the world, with an especially strong showing of works by U.S. artists that date from the 1960s and 1970s. Chernow’s unique vision is manifest in a setting that allows students to “live with” art, to increase learning, to promote critical thinking, and to enhance their lives.

The Burt Chernow Galleries present a wide range of changing exhibitions that include traveling shows as well as original exhibitions curated by museum staff and guest curators. In addition, Beacon Hall has a special “Community Gallery” space, which provides a showcase for smaller displays that highlight underserved or underrepresented artists or address community issues.

The Housatonic Museum of Art also encourages collaborative programming around the permanent collection and temporary shows, working with the Housatonic Community College faculty and students to create projects that activate the collection in meaningful ways through the use of artworks, texts, interpretation, and new directions in contemporary art.

Refresh, the reinstallation of the permanent collection throughout the campus, was initiated by Director Robbin Zella and Curator Terri C. Smith. Artists include: Arman, Larry Bell, Christo, Hans Bellmer, Elaine de Kooning, Valerie Jadoun, Alex Katz, Craig Kauffman, Jeff Koons, Sylvia Sleigh, Raphael Soyer, and Larry Zox.

Paper Trail: 15th Anniversary Celebration of the Burt Chernow Galleries

Culled from the nearly 2,000 works in storage in the Museum’s print room, Paper Trail is a celebration of not only the Burt Chernow Galleries, which opened in 1997, but the Museum’s print collection as well. 

  

The late Burt Chernow taught at Housatonic Community College and was the founder and Director Emeritus of the Museum.  He, and his wife Ann, also an artist and printmaker, donated many works to the collection and encouraged their friends to do the same.  The exhibition includes prints given by the Chernows, such as Paul Signac’s Boats on the Seine, c. 1927 and Jacques Callot’s Temptation of St. Anthony, 1635, as well as many others given as a result of their efforts.  Paper Trail showcases nearly 50 prints in a variety of media, including etchings, engravings, lithographs, woodcuts and screenprints.  The exhibition includes works by Pablo Picasso, Mary Cassatt, Paul Cézanne, Robert Rauschenberg, Henri Matisse, Albrecht Dürer, Roy Lichtenstein and Elaine de Kooning, to name a few.

Paper Trails: 15^th Anniversary Celebration of the Burt Chernow Galleries is the result of a nearly year-long cataloguing project by Maura Brennan, Curator of Prints and Drawings, a position funded by the Werth Family Foundation and the Fairfield County Community Foundation. Drawn on the strengths of the collection, this exhibition highlights works by The School of Paris, as well as American printmakers from the 1960s and 1970s.

Sculpture in the 21st Century

The Housatonic Museum of Art presents Sculpture in the 21st Century featuring work by members of the New York Sculptors Guild. The exhibit will open Thursday, February 23 and continue through March 10, 2012. A reception for the artists will be held Sunday, February 26 from 1 to 3pm in the Burt Chernow Galleries. This event is free and the public is cordially invited to attend.

The Sculptors Guild, founded in 1937, was an important moment for Modern sculpture in America and Guild members have ranked among the most prestigious and significant artists of the past seven decades. David Smith, an influential mid-20th century sculptor and a forerunner of welded steel constructions of expressive geometric abstractions, exhibited regularly with Sculptors Guild along with such renowned figures as Jacques Lipchitz, Louise Bourgeois, Seymour Lipton, lbram Lassaw and Herbert Ferber. In addition, Expressionist figurative sculpture also flourished, most notably exemplified by the work of Paul Manship, Chaim Gross, William Zorach, Jacques Lipchitz, and Jose de Creeft.

With the advent of the new millennium the Sculptors Guild has enjoyed a resurgence of interest by emerging sculptors of various divergent aesthetics. The continuation of the extensive history of prominent sculpture visionaries within Sculptors Guild avant garde has extensively expanded during the past decade to include the notable digital sculptors: Bruce Beasley, Kenneth Snelson, Jon Isherwood, Robert Michael Smith, Michael Rees, Barry X Ball, Dan Collins, Mary Bates Neubauer, David Smalley, Greg Lock, David Morris, Michael Zansky and Dan Henderson.

In 2010, the Housatonic Museum of Art invited Nick Capasso, Senior Curator at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts to select works created by the members for this exhibition. Capasso chose twenty-eight sculptures by fourteen artists, using several criteria.

“First and foremost,” Capasso said, “is my interest in work that is well wrought, and displays a confident, unselfconscious, or experimental attitude toward material, form, subject, and content. I was most attracted to works that look forward to the aesthetic and philosophical concerns of the 21st century, rather than back towards the 20th century.” Capasso selected a diverse body of work that explores architecture, history, art history, science, biology and the complexities of nature, and spirituality.

Sculpture of the 21st Century includes Stephanie Rocknack, June Ahrens, Eve Ingalls, Greg Lock, Lucy Hodgson, Steve Dono, Michael Zansky, Irene Gennaro, Mary Ellen Scherl, Katie Truk, Elizabeth Knowles, Alison Helm, Robert Michael Smith, and Mary Bailey.

Founded on the idea that art should be a part of daily life, Burt Chernow, an art historian, established the Housatonic Museum of Art (HMA) in 1967. Over the course of forty years, he built a significant collection of more than 4,000 objects, a portion of which are on display throughout our 300,000 square foot facility. The collection includes significant examples of art from every part of the world, with an especially strong showing of works by U.S. artists that date from the 1960s and 1970s. Chernow’s unique vision is manifest in a setting that allows students to “live with” art, to increase learning, to promote critical thinking, and to enhance their lives.

The Burt Chernow Galleries present a wide range of changing exhibitions that include traveling shows as well as original exhibitions curated by museum staff and guest curators. In addition, Beacon Hall has a special “Community Gallery” space, which provides a showcase for smaller displays that highlight underserved or underrepresented artists or address community issues.

The Housatonic Museum of Art also encourages collaborative programming around the permanent collection and temporary shows, working with the Housatonic Community College faculty and students to create projects that activate the collection in meaningful ways through the use of artworks, texts, interpretation, and new directions in contemporary art.

Refresh, the reinstallation of the permanent collection throughout the campus, was initiated by Director Robbin Zella and Curator Terri C. Smith. Artists include: Arman, Larry Bell, Christo, Hans Bellmer, Elaine de Kooning, Valerie Jadoun, Alex Katz, Craig Kauffman, Jeff Koons, Sylvia Sleigh, Raphael Soyer, and Larry Zox.