PHILADELPHIA, PA.- The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Bryn Mawr College present Beyond Boundaries: Feminine Forms, a dual-sited exhibition of artworks from PAFA's Linda Lee Alter Collection of Art by Women and BMC's The William and Uytendale Scott Memorial Study Collection of Works by Women Artists.
The collaboration brings together two institutions, collections, and curatorial teams for an exhibition that highlights and re-examines each institution's inclusive efforts to collect artworks by women. Organized according to seven themes, the exhibition investigates the many ways in which women artists challenge stereotypes attributed to the female body, landscape, language, myth, and spirituality, inspiring new interpretive possibilities.
The exhibition features over 80 works on paper, photography, painting, and sculpture by over 70 artists, including many artists from the Philadelphia area, as well as recent acquisitions on view for the first time. Situated across two sites, the exhibition breaks institutional boundaries in order to unite and understand these inclusive collections.
The works on view range from revealing the uncanny within domesticity in works by Betye Saar, Louise Bourgeois, Sihn Ja An Whiteley; veiling and unveiling the body with Janice Becker, Nancy Grossman, and Miriam Shapiro; writing as a rite of passage with Lesley Dill, Faith Ringgold, and Diane Pieri; unearthing abstractions inspired by nature with Edna Andrade, Ruth Fine, and Joyce Kozloff; deconstructing unity in the work of Arlene Love, Nancy Spero, and Joan Mitchell; demystifying the muse with Patricia Mangione, Emily Mason, and Elizabeth Catlett; and rethinking the movement of time in works by Deborah Remington, Alison Saar, and Germaine Arnaktauyok.
Beyond Boundaries opened at PAFA on September 15 and at Bryn Mawr College with a reception on September 28, 4:30-6 p.m. The exhibition is organized by Laurel McLaughlin and Mechella Yezernitskaya, art history graduate students at Bryn Mawr College, in consultation with Carrie Robbins, Bryn Mawr's Curator for Art & Artifacts, Jodi Throckmorton, PAFA's Curator of Contemporary Art, and Judith Thomas, PAFA's Director of Exhibitions.