Art Talk // Independent Spirits: Women Artists of the American West
April 3, 2024 | 6 pm | Singer Hall
TICKETS: Free for Members | $5 for the general public
Landmark traveling exhibition Independent Spirits, organized in 1995 by the Autry Museum of the American West, introduced many viewers to the rich history of western women artists. Many of the artists whose works were displayed were either drawn from their families or were in the hands of dealers, rather than museums. In the nearly thirty years since that exhibition, the recognition of this group of artists has grown, demonstrated by auction records, exhibitions, and museum purchases. Hear from Adjunct Curator of American Art Betsy Fahlman who will explore a rich sampling of a broad range of talented women artists of the American West.
About the Speaker:
Betsy Fahlman, Ph.D., is a professor of art history at Arizona State University, where she has taught since 1988. Since 2016, she has also served as adjunct curator of American art at Phoenix Art Museum. A specialist and widely published in the field of American art history, she has a strong focus on American Modernism, women artists, the art history of the Southwest, and the relationship between American art and industry. She curated Landscapes of Extraction: The Art of Mining in the American West in 2021, which was accompanied by a book published by Hirmer. She was co-curator with Michael K. Komanecky of “William Herbert “Buck” Dunton: A Mainer Goes West,” which opened at the Harwood before coming to Phoenix Art Museum. Her essay in the catalogue is titled “The New Woman Goes West: Gender and Mythmaking in the Work of W. Herbert Dunton.” For Maria and Modernism, an exhibition that will open at the Heard Museum in February, she has written an essay titled “Engaging Traditional and Modern Worlds: Rethinking Maria Martinez.” She is completing a book titled a book, New Women/New Lives: Arizona’s Early Women Artists, 1900-1945.; and the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Boston, MA among others. Ritchie lives and works in New York.