Artists Speak: The Anonymous Was A Woman Symposium
Anonymous Was A Woman (AWAW) presents Artists Speak: The Anonymous Was A Woman Symposium, a free public talks program that will convene artists, curators, organization leaders, philanthropists, writers and other thinkers at New York University on April 9, 2025. This symposium represents a more public chapter of advocacy for Anonymous Was A Woman.
The symposium will present and analyze the results of the Anonymous Was A Woman Artist Survey, a landmark study that AWAW undertook last fall to gain a better understanding of women artists’ lives and careers, and the factors contributing to their successes and challenges. The survey was produced in collaboration with journalists Charlotte Burns and Julia Halperin, arts leader Loring Randolph, and SMU Data Arts; the resulting report, by Burns, Halperin and SMU, synthesizes the responses of over 1200 artists of all ages.
Artists Speak will include talks and panel discussions about the survey results, with the goals of gathering insight and developing strategies to better serve women artists. Organized by Burns, Halperin, and Randolph, the program will feature a keynote address by Jessica Morgan, Director of the Dia Art Foundation, and panel discussions including AWAW recipients Coco Fusco, Steffani Jemison, Judith Bernstein and Rashida Bumbray; Connie Butler, Director of MoMA PS1; Karen Patterson, Executive Director of the Ruth Foundation for the Arts; and gallerist Nicola Vassell.
As Susan notes, “The political climate has changed and the artist community is at risk, so now it’s time to share experiences and find ways to support women artists. Together we have power and coming together matters.”
You can find further information and a schedule for the symposium below. We hope to see you there!
Artists Speak is currently at capacity, but we encourage you to please register for the waitlist below, as we do anticipate some drop-off. You will be alerted as space becomes available!
Location: Rosenthal Pavilion, The Kimmel Center, NYU, 60 Washington Square S, New York, NY 10012
Program:
9 AM - Doors open
9:15 - Welcome and Introduction
Loring Randolph
9:20 - Opening Statement
Susan Unterberg, Founder AWAW
9:30 - Overview: The Results of the AWAW Artist Survey
Julia Halperin, Charlotte Burns, and Annie Bares
10:00 - Artists Speak: Real Life Reflections on the Results
Moderated by Julia Halperin, and featuring artists Steffani Jemison, Coco Fusco, and Judith Bernstein
This panel will further dive into the findings of the AWAW survey by discussing the experiences of three artists (and AWAW award winners) of different generations. Topics of discussion will range from financial stability and the importance of community to institutional support and censorship.
11:15 - Keynote: Pathways to Change: A Case Study of Dia Art Foundation
Jessica Morgan, Director Dia Art Foundation
11:40:00 - Breaking the Mold: New Models for Women Artists
Moderated by Charlotte Burns, and featuring Rashida Bumbray, Karen Patterson, Nicola Vassell, and Connie Butler
This panel brings together experts with extensive experience in developing new models and driving change within existing structures. Together, they will explore how to more effectively meet the needs women artists have voiced in the AWAW survey. If many current systems aren’t working, what are the alternatives?
12:45:00 - Closing Remarks
Susan Unterberg, Founder AWAW
Speaker Bios:
Judith Bernstein (AWAW 2006) graduated from Yale in 1967 and developed a reputation as one of the most unwaveringly provocative artists of her generation. Steadfast in her cultural, political and social critique for almost 60 years, she surged into art world prominence in the early 1970s with her monumental charcoal drawings of penis-screw hybrids; early incarnations of which were exhibited at A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn Museum, and MoMA P.S.1, among other institutions. In reviewing Bernstein’s 2012-13 solo exhibition at the New Museum, Ken Johnson, critic at the NYTimes, referred to these works as “bravura performances of draftsmanship” and “masterpieces of feminine protest”.
Bernstein is a founding member of A.I.R. Gallery – the first all-female artists gallery in the United States – and an early member of Guerrilla Girls, Art Workers’ Coalition and Fight Censorship. Bernstein will be the subject of a solo exhibition at Kunsthaus, Chipperfield Building, Zurich in 2026. Bernstein has work in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Whitney Museum; MoCA; LACMA; the Brooklyn Museum; Jewish Museum; Kunsthaus Zurich; Migros Museum; Carnegie Museum of Art; DesteFoundation; Neuberger Museum; Hall Art Foundation; Yale Art Gallery. She was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016. She is represented by Kasmin Gallery NY, The Box LA, and Karma International Zurich.
Rashida Bumbray (AWAW 2024) is a curator and choreographer. In 2022, she curated Loophole of Retreat: Venice, a three-day global symposium focused on Black women’s intellectual and creative labor as part of Simone Leigh’s Exhibition “Sovereignty” at the American Pavilion for the 59th Venice Biennale. As Director of Culture and Art at the Open Society Foundations (2015-2022), Bumbray spearheaded the development of the foundations’ first global program dedicated to advancing diverse artistic practices and strengthening locally-led cultural spaces globally. Bumbray began her curatorial career in 2001 at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. As Associate Curator at The Kitchen, New York (2006-2012), Bumbray organized critically acclaimed commissions and exhibitions, including the first NY solo exhibitions for many artists, including Simone Leigh, Leslie Hewitt, Adam Pendleton, Lauren Kelley, Jamal Cyrus, and Elodie Pong. Bumbray was the guest curator of Creative Time’s public art exhibition Funk, God, Jazz, and Medicine: Black Radical Brooklyn in 2014.
Bumbray’s work in performance and experimental film draws from Black vernacular and folk forms, including ring shouts, work songs, hoofing, and the blues. In 2024, she received the Anonymous Was A Woman Award and the Ruby’s Artists Award. Her works have been presented by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Black Star Film Festival, Project Row Houses, Dancing While Black, SummerStage, The Park Avenue Armory, Dia: Chelsea (with Leslie Hewitt), Tate Exchange (with Simone Leigh), The New Museum (with Simone Leigh), Whitney Museum of American Art (with Jason Moran & Alicia Hall Moran), and The 2015 Venice Biennale: All The Worlds Futures (with Jason Moran & Alicia Hall Moran). Bumbray was nominated for the prestigious Bessie Award for “Outstanding Emerging Choreographer” (2014). Her work RUN MARY, performed in the 2012 Whitney Biennial as part of Jason Moran & Alicia Hall Moran’s residency BLEED, was named among New York Time’s best performances of 2012 and is featured in Common’s short film Black America Again (2016), directed by Bradford Young. A graduate of Oberlin College, Bumbray also has an MA in Africana Studies from New York University. Her writing on contemporary art, cultural studies, and comparative literature is published in journals and exhibition catalogues.
Connie Butler is the Agnes Gund Director of MoMA PS1 in Queens, NY. Prior to her arrival in fall 2023, she was Chief Curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles where she organized numerous exhibitions including the biennial of Los Angeles artists Made in LA (2014); Mark Bradford: Scorched Earth (2015); Marisa Merz: The Sky Is a Great Space (2017); Lari Pittman: Declaration of Independence (2019); and Witch Hunt (2021). She also co-organized with MoMA, Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions which opened at the Hammer in October 2018.
From 2006-2013 she was the Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings at The Museum of Modern Art, New York where she co-curated the first major Lygia Clark retrospective in the United States (2014) and On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century (2010) in addition to Greater New York (2010) and Mike Kelley (2013) at MOMAPS1. Butler also organized the groundbreaking survey WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (2007) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles where she was curator from 1996-2006. In 2020 Butler received the Bard College Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence.
Coco Fusco (AWAW 2021) is an interdisciplinary artist and writer. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and a Professor of Art at Cooper Union. Fusco is a recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship, a United States Artists fellowship, a Fulbright fellowship and a Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. Fusco's performances and videos have been presented in the 56th Venice Biennale, Frieze Special Projects, Basel Unlimited, three Whitney Biennials (2022, 2008 and 1993), and several other international exhibitions. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Walker Art Center, the Centre Pompidou, the Imperial War Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona. She is represented by Mendes Wood DM.
Fusco is the author of Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba (2015), English is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas (1995), The Bodies That Were Not Ours (2001) and A Field Guide for Female Interrogators (2008). Tomorrow I Will Become an Island, a solo retrospective of Fusco’s works was presented at Berlin’s KW Institute of Contemporary Art in 2023, accompanied by a monograph published by Thames & Hudson. Another survey of her works will open at MACBA in Barcelona in May 2025.
Steffani Jemison (AWAW 2023) is an interdisciplinary artist and writer in Brooklyn, New York whose work explores such questions as: How do we move? How are we moved by each other? In dialogue with interlocutors (living and ancestral), her work connects mark-making, gesture, proposal, projection, movement, and document. Jemison has presented solo exhibitions and commissioned performances at JOAN Los Angeles, Greene Naftali, Mass MoCA, Jeu de Paume, CAPC Bordeaux, the Museum of Modern Art, LAXART, and other venues. Her work has been included in significant generational exhibitions, including Greater New York 2021 and the Whitney Biennial 2019, and is part of many public collections, including the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Jemison’s novella A Rock, A River, A Street was published by Primary Information in 2022; she has also written for Artforum and The Brooklyn Rail. Her work is currently on view in permanent collection exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), the Albright-Knox (Buffalo), and the Albertinum Museum (Dresden) and in the touring exhibition A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration. She is an Associate Professor at Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts.
Jessica Morgan joined Dia Art Foundation as Director in January 2015 and was named Nathalie de Gunzburg Director in October 2017. At Dia, Morgan is responsible for strengthening and activating all parts of Dia’s multivalent program, including its pioneering Land art projects, site-specific commissions, and collections and programming across its constellation of sites. Since assuming directorship, Morgan has led a series of initiatives reaffirming and reinvigorating the nonprofit’s founding vision and principles. Since 2018, Morgan has led a comprehensive, multi-year project to upgrade and revitalize Dia’s programmatic spaces.
Prior to assuming her position at Dia, Morgan was The Daskalopoulos Curator, International Art, at Tate Modern in London from 2010 to 2014, and was Curator at Tate from 2002 to 2010. In addition to her work on exhibitions, Morgan played a key role in the growth of Tate’s collection—driving the development of the museum’s holdings of mid-century and emerging art from North America, the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. Morgan was previously Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
Morgan curated the 2020-22 Verbier Art Summits and served as the artistic director of the 10th Gwangju Biennale in 2014. Morgan is on numerous international advisory boards, including the Sounding Board for Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany; the Advisory Committee for the Collection, MACBA, Barcelona, Spain; and the Advisory Board for the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, Mumbai, India.
Karen Patterson serves as Executive Director for The Ruth Foundation for the Arts (Ruth Arts), which launched on June 30, 2022, supported by the generous bequest from the late Ruth DeYoung Kohler II (1941–2020). Ruth Arts aims to explore new possibilities for arts philanthropy through an artist-driven approach. Patterson previously served as Director of Exhibitions and Curator at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, working on projects with artists such as Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Jayson Musson, Rose B. Simpson,Toshiko Takaezu, Betty Woodman, among others.
As Senior Curator at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center from 2012-2019, she worked on several exhibitions including Ray Yoshida's Museum of Extraordinary Values, and Lenore Tawney: Mirror of the Universe, among many others.Most recently, she co-curated Ruth Arts’ inaugural exhibition, Benny Andrews: Trouble—the first major presentation of the late artist’s artwork and archives.
AWAW Survey and Artists Speak Leadership Bios
Annie Bares is the Every Page Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at SMU DataArts, where she collaborates with funders, government agencies, and arts service organizations on research in the cultural sector related to organization trends and gender equity in the arts workforce. Before DataArts, she worked for AEA Consulting, where she conducted research for strategic, capital, and cultural planning for cultural organizations. She’s also taught courses in literature and film at the University of Texas at Austin and Cultural Policy at Teachers College, Columbia University. She holds a BA in English from Rhodes College and an MA and PhD in English Literature from the University of Texas at Austin.
Charlotte Burns is a journalist and founder of Studio Burns and the co-founder of The Burns Halperin Report, the largest data study of its kind tracking representation in museums and the market. She is also the host of the podcasts The Art World: What If…?!, Hope & Dread and In Other Words for Schwartzman& in New York. She has written for publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, Monocle and Cultured magazine and was formerly the art market, news and business editor (Americas) for The Art Newspaper and Before becoming a journalist, she worked for galleries including Hauser & Wirth and Anthony d'Offay, and for the London cultural communications firm Bolton & Quinn.
Julia Halperin is an arts and culture journalist, editor, and co-founder of the Burns Halperin Report. She is a contributor to the New York Times, the Financial Times, and W magazine, among other publications. She also serves as editor at large of CULTURED magazine and a contributing editor to The Art Newspaper, where she writes a monthly column about changes and challenges in American art museums. From 2017 to 2022, she was executive editor of Artnet News.
Loring Randolph is a leader of the international art world with nearly 20 years of experience. She currently serves as the Director of the Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Collection. Previously, she was a director of the international art fair organization Frieze Inc., where she led Frieze’s business in the Americas, Frieze New York, and public art programming in New York City. Other projects include “Talking Galleries” New York (2024 and 2022), a two-day symposium with 40+ speakers from the international art world. She was named “Art World Innovator” by Artnet News’s Fall 2020 Intelligence Report.
SMU DataArts, the National Center for Arts Research, is a project of the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University. The mission of SMU DataArts is to provide and engage both organizations and individuals with the evidence-based insights needed to collectively build strong, vibrant, and equitable arts communities. Its research efforts range from academic papers published in leading journals, applied research undertaken with community partners, and actionable insights shared directly with arts practitioners. Its programs provide business intelligence tools and resources to help arts leaders leverage data to answer critical management questions and connect research analyses to their own work. Recent publications include research reports on emergence from the COVID-19 crisis; the alchemy that drives high performing arts organizations of color; audience diversity, equity and inclusion in large performing arts organizations; impact of investments made in diverse creative communities; and more.