Announcements From the Foundation

“Women and Change” at the Arken Museum of Modern Art in Denmark considers unfolding depictions of women in Western art history over the past 150 years, a period that roughly parallels the history of the women’s rights movement. The exhibition presents works by 64 international artists that challenge ideas about the body, gender, identity and history, including Francesca Woodman’s “Untitled” (1980).

Francesca Woodman in “girls girls girls” at Lismore Castle Arts, Lismore, Ireland. On view April 2 through October 30, 2022. Curated by Simone Rocha.

Congratulations to Edwin Frank, Woodman Family Foundation Board member and longtime friend, on being honored with the Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is a distinguished poet, founder and editor of New York Review Books Classics, and editorial director of New York Review Books.

Francesca Woodman in “A Century of the Artist’s Studio: 1920-2020.” Whitechapel Gallery, London. February 24 through June 5, 2022.

On the occasion of "Francesca Woodman: Alternate Stories," Marian Goodman Gallery commissioned eight video vignettes by an array of art historians, curators, and artists, each whom brought their own perspective to Woodman’s work and the exhibition currently on view. In this video, Elisabeth Sussman, the Curator and Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art, contextualizes Woodman's work within the framework of its era.

On the occasion of "Francesca Woodman: Alternate Stories," Marian Goodman Gallery commissioned eight video vignettes by an array of art historians, curators, and artists, each whom brought their own perspective to Woodman’s work and the exhibition currently on view. In this video, Kevin Moore, a New York based curator and writer, on Woodman's Victorian aesthetic, identity exploration and the artist's role in her artistic narrative.

On the occasion of "Francesca Woodman: Alternate Stories," Marian Goodman Gallery commissioned eight video vignettes by an array of art historians, curators, and artists, each whom brought their own perspective to Woodman’s work and the exhibition currently on view. In this video, Drew Sawyer, the Brooklyn Museum's Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum Leonian Curator, discusses Woodman's historical references and artistic affinities among her and her peers.

On the occasion of "Francesca Woodman: Alternate Stories," Marian Goodman Gallery commissioned eight video vignettes by an array of art historians, curators, and artists, each whom brought their own perspective to Woodman’s work and the exhibition currently on view. In this video, Chris Kraus, the American critic and writer, talks through Francesca Woodman's artistic process.

On the occasion of “Francesca Woodman: Alternate Stories,” Marian Goodman Gallery commissioned eight video vignettes by an array of art historians, curators, and artists, each whom brought their own perspective to Woodman’s work and the exhibition currently on view. In this video, Rosalind Krauss, art critic and theorist and Columbia University professor, discusses her initial responses to Woodman’s photographs when co-curating the retrospective exhibition at Hunter and Wellesley Colleges in 1986. She advocates for the formal power and intelligence of Woodman’s work, then and still today.

Francesca Woodman’s engagement with the figure was not only connected to re-interpretations of classical art, but also reflective of the art of her time. In the 1970s—when Woodman made much of her work as a student at the Rhode Island School of Design—artists from Hannah Wilke to Bruce Nauman were concerned with representations of the body and self, stemming from wide-ranging concerns about its relationship to cultural and physical space. Here Woodman uses the shroud—as plaster cast or embroidered sheet—in two series’ of images to alternately hide and reveal the figure’s form, in both sculptural and performative ways.

On the occasion of “Francesca Woodman: Alternate Stories,” Marian Goodman Gallery commissioned eight video vignettes by an array of art historians, curators, and artists, each whom brought their own perspective to Woodman’s work and the exhibition currently on view. In this video, Sabina Mirri, Italian artist and close friend of Woodman, shares her memories and impressions of Woodman as a singular, compelling young woman and artist during her time in Rome.

Francesca Woodman’s contact sheets are revealing about her process, demonstrating ways that ideas took shape as she explored and realized them while printing. Each contact sheet has at least a half a dozen frames trying to work out what the right composition should be for a particular photograph. Here she experiments with a variety of compositions and poses, concerned with juxtaposing various patterns, fabrics and the body.