On the occasion of Women’s History Month, and in conjunction with the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ second annual #5WomenArtists campaign, we’re celebrating the work of women artists with the Albright-Knox. Eleven of the 18 projects undertaken as part of our AK Public Art Initiative have featured works by women artists. We highlight five of them below.
Roberley Bell’s Locus Amoenus, 2016, is a group of sculptures designed to draw attention to the significant human interventions necessary to protect and maintain the fragile ecosystem at the Tifft Nature Preserve. This work is on view through early spring 2017.
In June 2016, Baltimore-based artist team Jessie and Katey created Noodle in the Northern Lights, a mural on an outside wall of Shea’s 710 Theatre, a prominent cornerstone of the Buffalo Theater District at Main and Tupper Streets. This work is on view indefinitely.
Installation view of Roberley Bell's Locus Amoenus, 2016, at Tifft Nature Preserve. Photograph by Tom Loonan.
Jessie and Katey's Noodle in the Northern Lights, 2016, at Shea's 710 Theatre. Photograph by Michael Krupski.
Kaarina Kaikkonen's We Share a Dream, 2015, at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. Photograph by Tom Loonan.
Visitors pose with Casey Riordan's Shark Girl, 2013—part of the Albright-Knox's Public Art Initiative—at Canalside Buffalo. Photograph by Tom Loonan.
From mid-August to mid-September 2016, Amanda Browder’s Spectral Locus was installed on the façades of three prominent buildings in Buffalo. Browder asked the community to donate fabrics and to join her for public sewing days to create the artwork.
In 2015, Kaarina Kaikkonen and volunteers created We Share a Dream by attaching hundreds of donated shirts at the sleeves, or “hands,” suggesting human connection even in absence. The work is on view at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport.
Perhaps the most well-known work in the Albright-Knox’s Public Art Initiative, Casey Riordan’s Shark Girl, 2012, patiently waits at Canalside Buffalo for a companion to join her. The museum is planning an exhibition of some of Riordan’s other Shark Girl works in summer 2017.
The other six AK Public Art projects featuring women artists include a 2016 mural led by Alice Mizrachi; two participatory projects by Jenny Kendler in 2015; a 2014 mural by Tape Art, which includes Leah Smith and Kristen Carbone; and upcoming works by Shantell Martin and Shasti O’Leary Soudant.
