Harmony Hammond is an artist, art writer, and independent curator. A leading figure in the development of the feminist art movement in New York in the early 1970s, she was a co-founder of AIR, the first women’s cooperative art gallery in New York (1972) and Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art & Politics (1976). Since 1984, Hammond has lived and worked in northern New Mexico, teaching at the University of Arizona, Tucson, from 1989 to 2006. Hammond’s earliest feminist work combined gender politics with post-minimal concerns of materials and process, frequently occupying a space between painting and sculpture—a focus that continues to this day. Her works Floorpiece II, III, and VI (1973), Grey Grid (1974), and Pink Weave (1975) are on view in the exhibition.
What role do textiles play in our lives, and in the history of modern art? In conjunction with Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, join us for a conversation with exhibition artists Harmony Hammond and Ulrike Müller, moderated by exhibition curator Lynne Cooke. Woven Histories explores the intersections between textile and abstract art, from the first decades of the 20th century to the present. Hammond and Müller will discuss the roles that textiles, the applied arts, and handicrafts—so-called “women’s work"—play in their practices and relate them to the larger issues raised by the exhibition, including questions of gender, social equity, and labor. A signing of the exhibition catalog follows in the East Building Concourse Shop.
Harmony Hammond, photograph by Clayton Porter
Ulrike Mülle, photograph by Katja Illness
Ulrike Müller lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She engages relationships between mediums and materials and a concept of painting that is not restricted to brush and canvas. Employing a wide range of materials and techniques, including printmaking, publishing, and textiles, her work moves between different contexts and publics, inviting collaborative engagement. Müller studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria, and participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York. Her installation Hinges (2023) is featured in the exhibition.