Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection

With this exhibition, the Brooklyn Museum highlights the political edge of its collection, displaying the work by more than 50 artists whose practice has responded to feminism over the last century. Taking its title from a Guerrilla Girls poster of 1989, which declared that ‘You’re seeing less than half the picture without the vision of women artists and artists of color’, the display traces the history of feminist art from World War One to #MeToo, via the Civil Rights Movement.

The importance to this narrative of women artists who focus on race and class is highlighted, from Wendy Red Star’s commentaries upon the depiction of Native Americans in popular culture to Beverley Buchanan’s shack sculptures, which reimagined the tumbledown homes of America’s rural South that originated as slave cabins. Buchanan’s works are some of several recent acquisitions by the Brooklyn Museum that are on display here for the first time; others include Betty Tompkin’s Fuck Painting #6 (the first time a work from the series has been on show in a US institution), and Nona Faustine’s Lefferts House, Brooklyn. Find out more about ‘Half the Picture’ from the Brooklyn Museum’s website.

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You’re Seeing Less than Half the Picture, Guerrilla Girls

You’re Seeing Less than Half the Picture (1985), Guerrilla Girls. Photo: Jonathan Dorado, Brooklyn Museum; © Guerrilla Girls

Untitled (Man Smoking/Malcolm X), from the Kitchen Table series (1990), Carrie Mae Weems. Photo: Sarah DeSantis, Brooklyn Museum; © Carrie Mae Weems