In 1972, a group of 20 New York artists founded the A.I.R. Gallery — the first nonprofit cooperative exhibition space for women artists in the United States. (The name was a punning reference to the phrase “artist in residence” and the book “Jane Eyre.”)
At 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 31, Washington University in St. Louis will host a panel discussion on women artists. Kat Griefen, who directed A.I.R. from 2006-11, will serve as keynote speaker for “A.I.R. Refreshed: Women in the Art World from the 1970s to Today.”
The event, which will take place in Olin Library’s Gingko Reading Room on the Danforth Campus, is held in conjunction with “A.I.R. Refreshed,” an exhibition featuring work by 33 A.I.R. artists, from New York and around the country. The exhibition remains on view in the Ginko Reading Room and adjacent hallway through April 17.
Moderating the panel is Elizabeth Childs, PhD, the Etta and Mark Steinberg Professor of Art History and chair of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences. Panelists are artist Heather Bennett (BFA/BA ’94), a lecturer in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts; Helen Kornblum, a prominent St. Louis collector of works by women artists; and Yvonne Osei, a Chancellor’s Fellow in the Graduate School of Art.
Both the exhibition and panel are free and open to the public and are sponsored by the Department of Art History & Archaeology and by the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program and the Center for the Humanities, both in Arts & Sciences; by the Graduate School of Art and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, both part of the Sam Fox School; and by the Law, Culture and Identity Initiative in the Washington University School of Law.
A reception will follow the panel at 7:30 p.m. Refreshments will be served. For more information, email artarch@wustl.edu.
