Skip to content
Photo: Charles Villyard
Free, Talks

We Are Here: Conversations

Sunday, April 21, 2019

10:00 a.m.–5 p.m.

Floor 4, Gina and Stuart Peterson White Box

Free with museum admission

As a part of the groundbreaking retrospective exhibition Suzanne Lacy: We Are Here, SFMOMA brings together curators and scholars to discuss the impact of feminism on contemporary artistic practice. This day-long symposium includes a screening of Lynn Hershman Leeson’s !Women, Art, Revolution (2010), which documents the challenges faced by women artists within the larger framework of the civil rights movement, and features artists such as Suzanne Lacy, Judy Chicago, and the Guerilla Girls. Panel discussions offer firsthand perspectives into feminist curatorial practice and recent exhibitions, as well as explorations of feminism as it intersects with issues of race, class, sexuality, and gender, and the levers of power and privilege.

Schedule

10 a.m. Symposium Introduction
Tomoko Kanamitsu, interim head of public dialogue at SFMOMA and Rudolf Frieling, curator of media arts at SFMOMA and co-curator of Suzanne Lacy: We Are Here.

10:20 a.m. Screening: !Women, Art, Revolution (2010)
Screening of the film !Women, Art, Revolution (83 min.), with introduction from the director: artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson. The film will begin at 10:35 a.m.

12–1:30 p.m. Lunch Break

1:30–3 p.m. Panel One: Curating Feminism
Curators discuss recent exhibitions that focus on feminist curatorial practice and its relationship to activism within and beyond the museum walls. Introduction by Dominic Willsdon, director of the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University and co-curator of Suzanne Lacy: We Are Here.

Speakers: Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Astria Suparak, Sally Tallant
Moderator: Apsara DiQuinzio

3–3:30 p.m. Break

3:30–5 p.m. Panel Two: Dialogues around Difference
A discussion on the ways in which artists have addressed feminism and its relationship to larger systems of oppression and discrimination based not only on gender, but also race, sexuality, ability, and class in the era of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. Introduction by Lucía Sanromán, curator at large, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), and co-curator of Suzanne Lacy: We Are Here.

Speakers: Andreana Clay, Anuradha Vikram, Favianna Rodriguez
Chair and Moderator: Jacqueline Francis

Symposium Participants:

Lynn Hershman Leeson, artist and filmmaker
Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, independent curator
Astria Suparak, independent curator
Sally Tallant, president and executive director, Queens Museum
Apsara DiQuinzio, curator of modern and contemporary art and Phyllis C. Wattis MATRIX Curator, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA)
Andreana Clay, chair and associate professor, Department of Sociology, San Francisco State University
Anuradha Vikram, artistic director, 18th Street Arts Center; senior lecturer, Otis College of Art and Design
Favianna Rodriguez, artist and activist; executive director of CultureStrike
Jacqueline Francis, chair and associate professor, Graduate Visual and Critical Studies Program, California College of the Arts (CCA)