Isolde Brielmaier to Lead Panel with Kimberly Drew, Natalie Frank, and Amy Richards Examining Feminism in the Digital Age
SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY (January 22, 2018) — On Monday, January 29, at 6 pm, Tang Curator-at-Large Isolde Brielmaier will lead a group of innovative thinkers on present-day feminism and the implications of technology in a discussion titled “#feminism?: Activism & Agitation in the Digital Age.” In recent years, many have argued that digital media has paved the way for “Fourth Wave Feminism” by offering key platforms for people to come together and organize hashtag campaigns and grassroots movements. Social media, specifically, has allowed people to share stories, maintain a safe space in which to define feminism by working through urgent issues, and enact social and cultural exchanges with others from around the world.
Joining Brielmaier will be Kimberly Drew, a writer, curator, and activist, who is the Social Media Manager at The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Natalie Frank, an artist whose paintings and drawings revolve around women’s bodies, desires, and narratives; and Amy Richards, a writer, producer, and organizer.
“#feminism?: Activism & Agitation in the Digital Age” is part of the Accelerator Series at the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College. The event is free and open to the public.
About the Guest Speakers
Kimberly Drew is a writer, curator, and activist with a passion for innovation in art, fashion, and cultural studies. Drew received her B.A. from Smith College in Art History and African-American Studies, with a concentration in Museum Studies. Drew first experienced the art world as an intern in the Director’s Office of The Studio Museum in Harlem. Her time at the Studio Museum inspired her to start the Tumblr blog Black Contemporary Art, sparking her interest in social media. Drew is currently the Social Media Manager at The Met, was honored by AIR Gallery as the recipient of their inaugural Feminist Curator Award, and was selected as one of Brooklyn Magazine‘s “Brooklyn 100.”
Natalie Frank is an artist whose paintings and drawings revolve around women’s bodies, desires, and narratives, drawn from both the everyday and perverse fantasy. Upcoming exhibitions include drawings based on Anne Desclos’s Story of O at Half Gallery; Dread and Delight: Fairy Tales in an Anxious World at the Weatherspoon Museum; and a collaboration with the Austin Ballet designing sets and costumes for a new, full-length production based on the unsanitized Brothers Grimmʼs tales. Publications include Tales of the Brothers Grimm: Drawings by Natalie Frank (Damiani) and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Princeton University Press). Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, with solo and group exhibitions at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago; ACME, Los Angeles; Blanton Museum at University of Texas, Austin; and The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine; Montclair Museum of Art, Montclair, New Jersey; Rose Art Museum, MA; and London Museum of Design, UK. She graduated with a BA from Yale University in 2002 and an MFA from Columbia University in 2006.
Amy Richards is a writer, producer, and organizer. Most recently Amy produced the Emmy nominated series WOMAN for Viceland and curated a series of talks to accompany Annie Leibovitz’s traveling exhibit WOMEN. Amy is also the president of Soapbox, Inc., the foremost feminist lecture agency, and the affiliated Soapbox Foundation, creators of Feminist Camp. Amy lectures at dozens of venues each year and contributes, through her writings and media appearances, to the current public conversations on feminism. Her books include: Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism & the Future, and Opting In: Having a Child Without Losing Yourself. She is currently the board co-chair of the Sadie Nash Leadership Project and on the advisory board of Chicken & Egg Pictures.
About the Accelerator Series
The Accelerator Series is the Tang Teaching Museum’s dynamic conversation series on big ideas and big issues that seeks to find new entry points into discussions that veer from traditional paths. As an open and inclusive public forum for dialogue, exchange, and questioning, the Accelerator Series ignites a collective sense of intellectual curiosity and fosters thoughtful engagement with a deeper understanding of compelling issues that have the potential to spark radical transformations.
The series features key cultural influencers from the arts and culture sector as well as academia, entertainment, government, journalism, media, politics, and beyond, who present new perspectives and disrupt the status quo by encouraging a “getting comfortable with discomfort” attitude to think and work through big ideas to drive change.
The Accelerator Series is supported by Accelerate: Access and Inclusion at the Tang Teaching Museum, a project of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The next event in the Accelerator Series will be a discussion titled “Memory and Monuments: (Re-)Claiming Public Space” on Monday, February 26, at 6 pm. The panel will be moderated by Brielmaier, with the panelists to be named later. Check the Tang website for more updates.
About the Tang Teaching Museum
The Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College is a pioneer of interdisciplinary exploration and learning. A cultural anchor of New York’s Capital Region, the institution’s approach has become a model for university art museums across the country—with exhibition programs and series that bring together the visual and performing arts with fields of study as disparate as history, astronomy, and physics. The Tang has one of the most rigorous faculty-engagement initiatives in the nation, the Mellon Seminar, and robust publication and touring exhibition initiatives that extend the institution’s reach far beyond its walls. The Tang Teaching Museum’s building, designed by architect Antoine Predock, serves as a visual metaphor for the convergence of ideas and exchange the institution catalyzes.