Gender studies and art history to be focus of residency

The role of gender studies in art history—robustly illustrated with male and female iconography in artworks from Renaissance Italy and contemporary Africa—will be the subject of the 2009 Alfred Z. Solomon Residency taking place Thursday through Saturday, Oct. 28-30 at the Tang Museum.

Kitchen, Vincenzo Campi (1580s, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan)

Titled "Gender Studies and Art History," the three-day residency will include two lectures and a panel discussion that are free and open to the public. The events will take place in the museum's Payne Presentation Room, and will feature two distinguished art historians whose research interests are drawn from different continents and centuries. Henry Drewal, the Evjue-Bascom Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, researches the African water spirit known as Mami Wata (pidgin English for "Mother Water"). Patricia Simons, an associate professor in History of Art/Women's Studies at the University of Michigan, explores representations of masculinity in the art of Renaissance Italy.

The residency will begin with Drewal's 5:30 p.m. lecture Wednesday, Oct. 28, titled "Spirit Spouse: Art and Gender Identity in the Worship of Mami Wata." Known and worshipped throughout much of Africa, Mami Wata is often pictured as a beautiful woman with a snake coiled around her body. Part mermaid, part carnival snake-charmer, the deity has ties to African water spirits, European mermaids, Hindu gods and goddesses, and Christian and Muslim saints. "Many followers (both female and male) of the African water deity MamiWata—and of a host of mami wata/papi wata spirits—are drawn to them because of gender-identity crises," explains Drewal. He will introduce the visual culture and history of water spirits, and discuss the life, faith, and artistry of Katarina Walas, an Ewe priestess of Mami Wata who molds clay sculptures and creates sacred spaces to enrich and intensify her devotions.

At 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 29, Simons will present her lecture, "Sex in the Kitchen: The Social Iconography of Male Bodies in Renaissance Art and Culture." In examining artworks like Vincenzo Campi's ribald and graphic 1580s oil painting of a kitchen scene, Simons discovers "the boisterous rather than theological association of gluttony and lust," noting that "many metaphors for food preparation had a sexual sense. Such actions as ladling, grinding, mixing, stirring, grating, cooking, and baking are double entendres in both texts and image." In her talk, Simons will consider "the cross-fertilization of metaphors and bodies, and of ways in which various strata of evidence enable us to approach the texture of bodily experience in the past."

A Friday afternoon panel discussion will broaden the gender discussion to include disciplines beyond art history. Beginning at 2:30 p.m. Oct. 30, the discussion will feature Drewal and Simons with Skidmore faculty members Adrienne Zuerner (Foreign Languages), Natalie Taylor (Government), and Mason Stokes (English). Light refreshments at 2 p.m. will precede the discussion. While at Skidmore, Drewal and Simons will meet with students in art history classes, including some taught by residency coordinators Penny Jolly and Lisa Aronson. Drewal will also join students from Aronson's class, "Gender and Visual Culture in Africa," in the Tang's Permanent Collection to discuss and select objects for a student exhibition that will include the construction of a Mami Wata shrine. 

The 2009 Solomon Residency's spotlight on gender studies reflects the process currently under way at Skidmore to change the College's Women's Studies program to Gender Studies, with courses expected to appear in the fall 2010 master schedule. The interdisciplinary gender studies program will draw on feminist, gender, and queer theories and scholarship to analyze the experiences, perspectives, and contributions of women, men, and intersexed people, and systems of gender relations in various cultural settings and time periods.

The Alfred Z. Solomon Residency Fund was established by a bequest to the Tang Museum in 2006.  It supports short and long-term residencies at Skidmore, bringing notable visiting artists, scholars, and critics to the museum, classrooms, and studios to add an exciting and vital accent to the visual arts at Skidmore.  Additionally, the Solomon Residency program creates productive and collaborative teaching links between the programs of the Tang Museum and Skidmore's Departments of Art and Art History.  In 2009-10, an additional Solomon Residency is bringing artist Arlene Shechet to work with ceramics students and faculty of the Art Department, in conjunction with Shechet's solo exhibition at the Tang. 

Tags: solomon residency, patricia simons, henry drewal