News / Online Exhibits: Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series: Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series
2009 Exhibits

• A Declaration of Independence: 50 Years of Art by Faith Ringgold
• Alive at the End of Life: Photographs by Cathy Greenblat/Destiny: Photographs by Ernestine Ruben
• The Culture of Rights/The Rights of Culture

Detail, Faith Ringgold, Working Women, 1996 Acrylic on canvas, 41 x 31 inches Courtesy of Artist and ACA Galleries

A Declaration of Independence: 50 Years of Art by Faith Ringgold
May 17 - June 26, 2009

Mason Gross School of the Arts Galleries, Rutgers University
33 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Gallery Hours: Thursday-Sunday; 12 - 4 p.m.; and by appointment

Sunday, May 17, 2009 from 4:30-7:30 p.m.
IWA Gala & Celebration honoring Faith Ringgold
Mason Gross School of the Arts Galleries, Rutgers University

Painter Faith Ringgold is best known for her painted story quilts-art that combines painting, quilted fabric and storytelling. She has exhibited in major museums in the USA, Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, and her work is in the permanent collection of museums that include the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. She has written and illustrated many children's books and she has received more than 75 awards, fellowships, citations and honors, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Fellowship for painting and two awards from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her children's book "Tar Beach" was a Caldecott Honor Book and winner of the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration. This year Ringgold will be receiving an honorary degree from Rutgers University.

Download the Exhibition Catalog here

Alive at the End of Life: Photographs by Cathy Greenblat/Destiny: Photographs by Ernestine Ruben
March 19 to June 8, 2009

Reception & Artists' Talks
Thursday, April 16, 2009, 4:30 - 7 pm, Douglass Library
Re-visioning the End of Life - Cathy Greenblat / Life in Photography - Ernestine Ruben

Cathy Greenblat and Ernestine Ruben have been working on the visual imagery of life and death, one from a documentary perspective and the other metaphorically. Greenblat is Professor Emerita of Sociology at Rutgers University, Artist-in-Residence at the Hospital Network of Nice, and an Honorary Research Fellow at the International Observatory on End of Life Care, Institute for Health Research, Lancaster University, UK. Ruben, based in Princeton, NJ, is internationally known through exhibitions, publications and workshops. Her photographs are included in many major museums and private collections.

Cathy Greenblat, Nurse Heloisy Visiting Man Who Had Stroke, 2008, Ernestine Ruben, Synagogue Spirits, 2006 digital print, 16 x 20 inches

Ernestine Ruben, Synagogue Spirits, 2006

Exhibitions and events have been organized by the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series, a program of the Institute for Women and Art (IWA) in partnership with the Rutgers University Libraries. The Institute for Women & Art (IWA) is a unit of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and a center of the Office of the Associate Vice President for Academic & Public Partnerships in the Arts & Humanities. Co-sponsors include: Associate Alumnae of Douglass College, Department of Art History, the Institute for Research on Women, The Feminist Art Project, Global Initiatives, Women Artists Archives National Directory, and the Women's and Gender Studies Department. These events are made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Download the Exhibition Catalog here

Jenny Polak, Design for the Alien Within: The Vanity, 2006 Digital Drawing

The Culture of Rights/The Rights of Culture

"The Culture of Rights/The Rights of Culture: Jenny Polak"
January 20 to March 9, 2009
Mabel Smith Douglass Library Galleries
8 Chapel Dr., New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Gallery Hours: M-Th; 8:30 am - 7pm; Friday 8:30 am - 4pm; weekends by appt.

A juried solo show that provides a visual arts component to the IRW interdisciplinary seminar. Jenny Polak "designs and installs fictional architectural hiding and dwelling places for people without immigration papers… In alluding to illegal assistance of undocumented and stateless people, I draw on my life as a resident alien, my migratory family history, and current events."

Website: http://www.jennypolak.com/

See an interview with Jenny Polak: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-pp3hrAfrw

Special Event:
Thursday, February 19, 2009, 12 Noon
Jenny Polak, Artist's gallery talk
Mabel Smith Douglass Room, Douglass Library

Loren Schwerd, The Corner of Maurice and Chartres St., 2007 human hair, steel and wire, 18 x 12 x 8 inches

"The Culture of Rights/The Rights of Culture: Loren Schwerd"
February 19- March 12, 2009
Douglass Library Galleries (204B)

A juried solo show that provides a visual arts component to the IRW interdisciplinary seminar. Loren Schwerd has created a series of memorials to the communities of New Orleans that were devastated by the flooding following Hurricane Katrina, using human hair as one of her materials. "Hair acts as the essential metaphor for these works by evoking a sense of profound intimacy and absence, by referring to Victorian mourning practices, and by incorporating the racial politics that have paralyzed the city's recovery effort."

Website: http://www.lorenschwerd.com/