Kniznick Gallery celebrating anniversary with exhibit

Women's Studies Research Center and Hadassah-Brandeis affiliates featured

Above, "The Embroidery Lesson" by Ronni Kamarow; below, "The Tension of Opposites #4" by Louise Weinberg.

The Kniznick Gallery at the Women’s Studies Research Center will celebrate its 10-year anniversary this summer with a juried exhibition of art by 13 research center and Hadassah-Brandeis Institute scholars, staff and board members.

The exhibition will include photography, drawing, painting, sculpture, and artist’s books by Ornit Barkai, Patti Cassidy, Emily Corbato, Susan Eisenberg, Fran Forman, Karen Frostig, Mary Hamill, Ronni Kamarow, Michele L'Heureux, Karin Rosenthal, Rhoda Sapers, Rosalie Shane and Louise Weinberg. The variety of content and processes demonstrates the interdisciplinary nature of the center and its scholars.

The opening reception will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday, and will feature multimedia performances by Alexandra Borrie. The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, will remain open until Sept. 12.

WSRC founder and director Shulamit Reinharz has been committed from the beginning of the center to integrating the arts into its scholarly community, as expressed in the Center’s stated purpose to be a place “where research, art, and activism converge.”

The WSRC was built with an art gallery and a small art studio for visiting artists, and artists serve on the center’s board of directors and exhibitions committee. The center attempts to nurture scholars’ artistic projects and promote them to the public.

“We believe in the significance of making and appreciating the arts—music, dance, theater, visual arts—and integrating them fully with writing-based academic fields,” Reinharz says. “We have expressed this commitment architecturally, financially, socially, locally, and publicly, and in doing so, have created the only gallery dedicated exclusively to feminist exhibitions in New England, and possibly beyond.”

Resident Scholar, multimedia artist and activist Karen Frostig notes that “the WSRC has been a haven of support for my work as a practicing artist. Regular conversations with other artists and a genuine interest in ideas and project development is standard fare.”

Fellow scholar Susan Eisenberg, also a multimedia artist and activist, remarks “I could never have imagined the far-reaching impact of having ‘On Equal Terms,’ my mixed-media art installation about women in the construction industry, launch at the Kniznick Gallery in 2008. The exhibit is currently installed in the Smithsonian-affiliated Michigan State University Museum, and last weekend I received an email about ‘On Equal Terms’ from a woman stonecutter in France!”

Multidisciplinary artist and activist Mary Hamill, who produces collaborative and participatory art with the poor in Vietnam, Cambodia, Beijing and Boston, also says that “this exciting academic community stimulates my development of field work and installation art about poverty and illness.”

Curator Michele L’Heureux, a practicing artist herself, plans and executes four professional exhibitions in the Kniznick Gallery annually, all of which focus in some way on feminist themes. “There are very few places like this where scholarly research, artistic practice, and social activism come together in such a potent and dynamic way,” L’Heureux asserts. “It is exciting to be celebrating this 10-year milestone with a showcase of visual and performing art by those who have nurtured and benefited from the Center since its inception.”