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, Isolde Brielmaier, Deputy Director of the New Museum and the Curator-at-Large at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York, shares her thoughts on Woodman’s use of the body and the nude in her highly crafted photographs.

Francesca Woodman was well-acquainted with the traditions of Classical Western art and representations of the figure within it, which seeped into her own picture-making. While perhaps better-known for her photographs of the full female body—she specified that she used nudes “in an ironic sense like classical painting nudes"—Woodman returned again and again to highly composed glimpses of hands and feet.

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, Ann Gabhart, Woodman Family Foundation Board member, former Director of the Wellesley College Museum, and curator of Woodman’s first solo museum exhibition at Wellesley and Hunter Colleges in 1986, reflects on her early experiences with and impressions of Woodman’s work.

Read a review on "Francesca Woodman: Alternate Stories" by Arthur Lubow in The New York Times. The exhibition is currently on view at Marian Goodman Gallery, New York through December 23.

Francesca Woodman was a frequent visitor to the Maldoror bookshop during the year she spent studying in Rome. In the hours she spent rooting through the stacks there, she began to collect old notebooks filled with elaborate handwriting exercises and objective mathematical lessons, all in Italian.

"While I was in Rome my Junior year I began to work with the ideas that presently occupy me,” Francesca Woodman wrote in 1980. “I also met a number of Italian artists who shared similar concerns in other mediums. In June we had a show at the Ugo Ferranti Gallery, my first exhibition in a prestigious gallery. That year I also showed at the Libreria Maldoror, a book store and gallery specializing in Futurist and Dada Literature. The owners introduced me to many rare books and writers, ets.”

In the early 1980s, as Betty Woodman moved into a New York City loft with her husband, George Woodman, and began to shift her functional practice towards ceramic sculpture, she became friends with many artists deeply involved with the Pattern and Decoration movement. She collaborated with two of them: Joyce Kozloff and Cynthia Carlson.‍ With Kozloff, Woodman made ceramic forms—whether cups and saucers, pitchers or trays—which Kozloff then decorated with rich patterns inspired by Islamic tiles and motifs. The resulting works, which dissolve the line between craft and art, were shown in exhibitions at Tibor de Nagy Gallery and the Queens Museum in 1981.

Francesca Woodman was deliberate about the photographs she made, frequently sketching in her journal and jotting down notes about her concepts and intentions. Here you can see the evolution of some specific “Ideas in Antella:” first as simple drawings, then translated from photographic negatives to a contact sheet, and finally as the pair of lush and mysterious gelatin silver prints now on view at Marian Goodman Gallery New York.

Read about Francesca Woodman's work and new solo exhibition "Francesca Woodman: Alternate Stories" in a review by Johanna Fateman in 4Columns magazine. The exhibition is currently on view at Marian Goodman Gallery New York through December 23.

Over the course of Francesca Woodman's solo exhibition "Francesca Woodman: Alternate Stories" at Marian Goodman Gallery New York, we’ll be sharing additional images and materials from Woodman’s archive which shed light on her process and elaborate on specific works currently on view.

Around 2003, George Woodman began incorporating a green wooden Pinocchio into the assemblages of toys, props and images he used to construct his photographs. Pinocchio is an iconic figure in Italian literature and culture, popularized by the classic children’s novel “The Adventures of Pinocchio,” written by Florentine author Carlo Collodi in the late 19th century. Woodman was interested in Pinocchio as the protagonist in his own picture stories.

Read about the work of Francesca Woodman in the new issue of XIBT Magazine. Included are an interview with the Foundation's Executive Director Lissa McClure and Dr. Kostas Prapoglou and images of some of the vintage photographs currently on view in "Francesca Woodman: Alternate Stories" at Marian Goodman Gallery New York through December 23, 2021.