NWNY’s Cultural Trips: An exhibit at the Mayor’s House Chronicles the Resilience of Women in New York

An art show honors women whose setbacks and accomplishments have helped make New York an iconic city while examining the most pressing issues of our times, including race, class and gender

Written by Bruna Shapira

At Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, a dark bronze sculpture is displayed near the entrance. This faceless figure, with big, injured feet, is a reminder of a complicated past. The house’s first owner, shipping merchant Archibald Gracie, had slaves who built it as a country house, in 1799. The artwork is by Kara Walker, a contemporary artist whose recurring theme is American history, and is part of the show “She Persists: A Century of Women Artists in New York.” The exhibit focuses  on female creators who have been mostly overlooked but have significant connections to New York City. 

Aside from its connections with slavery, the mansion is not a conventional exhibition space with its white walls, compact light sources and no adornments. Converted to official residence of the mayor in 1942, it has period furniture, brightly colored rooms, and ornate light fixtures, which may conceal what is displayed on the walls. The curator Jessica Bell Brown decided to use this uniqueness in her favor. She worked thematically, pairing works from different periods and sources, in non-hierarchical and non-chronological ways. As a result, the 60 artworks, objects, and archival ephemera on view play off of one another and the mansion’s interiors, telling a moving story of resilience. 

In the ballroom, pins and books by Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress, welcome visitors. A Brooklyn native, she was the daughter of West Indian immigrants who were part of the great Caribbean diaspora beginning to transform New York City. On the walls, an excerpt from her historic 1974 speech: “Forget traditions! Forget conventionalisms! Forget what the world will say whether you’re in your place or out of your place. Stand up and be counted.” This is paired with the video Say it Plain (2013), a contemporary reimagining of the same speech by the artist Mickalene Thomas. Thomas, best known for her paintings of African-American women, casts herself as an audience member and a metaphorical subject of Chisholm’s speech. 

In the same space hangs The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist (1988), a poster by the anonymous collective of female artists Guerrilla Girls. The first “advantage” – “Working without the pressure of success” – is an ironic commentary on the other works on view, especially its first neighbor, Flower Piece (ca.1943), by Teresa Bernstein. She signed it “T. Bernstein” to mask her gender following episodes of discrimination against her as a woman artist. Although aware of the shift toward abstraction, Bernstein remained faithful to realism. She was among the first women to favor contemporary subject matter and urban scenes. The child of Jewish immigrants from Poland, she considered newcomers to be compelling subjects. She was also interested in depicting scenes related to the emancipation of women – the women’s suffrage movement, women traveling alone on public transportation, or women seeking employment.

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In the Peach Room hangs Sun Spot (1954) by Helen Frankenthaler. A life-long New Yorker like Teresa Bernstein, both women couldn’t have more different career paths. The youngest daughter of an affluent Jewish family, Frankenthaler helped define post-war American abstract paintings for more than 60 years. Critics sometimes described her work as “feminine,” interpreting her light palette as gender-oriented in contrast to the styles of macho male figures who came to personify Abstract Expressionism, like Jackson Pollock. She rejected this interpretation as well the label of “woman painter.” She identified instead as “a painter — period.” Next to Frankenthaler are two circular abstractions by Betty Blayton-Taylor, from 1980 and 2007. Blayton made a major impact on the museum scene in the city and was a founding member of the Studio Museum of Harlem, among other institutions and public programs. 

In the library, the painting Ginny and Elizabeth (1975) stands out, perhaps because of its unconventional depiction of motherhood. The author Alice Neel paints Ginny, her son Hartley’s wife, with their first daughter. Ginny is not portrayed as a composed Madonna – she appears tired and overwhelmed by her new role. Neel lived in  Spanish Harlem, home to many African-Americans and Latin Americans with whom she bonded. While painting her friends and neighbors, she polished her style to become one of the most important portraitists of the 20th century. Also on view, Brick in the Sky (1968), by Betty Parsons, a dealer of Abstract Expressionism who made interesting sculptures and paintings of her own, and The Village Series #7 (2019), by contemporanean artist Simone Leigh. A daughter of Jamaican missionaries, Leigh has explored the experiences and histories of black women through the ceramic tradition for more than 25 years. But the medium was long overlooked by the art world.

Among the most refreshing additions to the exhibit are three handcrafted dolls from the late 1980s, made by Katharine Clarissa Eileen McCray, the first lady’s mother. A daughter of immigrants from Barbados, McCray had always noted the lack of black dolls. She loved sewing and embroidery, but spent most of her life working in a factory to support her family. Like many female creators, she only got the chance to pursue her passion once she was older. Self-taught, she made Black and Brown dolls during a time when there were even fewer dolls of color available than now. She called them Quashies in tribute to her mother, whose maiden name, “Quashie,” was West African. Recognizing the dolls as works of art on their own, the curator acknowledges the universality of the creative impulse. “The hand is the cutting edge of the mind,” Diane Arbus, another artist on view, once said.

In the entrance to the parlor, Ana Mendieta’s La Vivificación de la Carne/Vivification of the Flesh (1982) is a prelude to other stories of endurance against adversity. A Cuban refugee in the United States, Mendieta used her body and organic materials like blood and mud for producing photographs, videos and performances that pushed ethnic, sexual and political boundaries in the 1970s and 1980s. The white geometric zigzag in Cuban-born Carmen Herrera’s Yesterday (1987) reverberates Mendieta’s work, as well as Lee Krasner’s Free Space (1976). Self-critical and experimental, both Herrera and Krasner pioneered abstracted works in the 1950s but got recognition much later in their lives. At 104, Herrera is only now experiencing commercial success – she is the subject of a major installation commissioned by the Public Art Fund at the City Hall Park. Lee, a child of Orthodox Russian Jews, left a small body of work for posterity, which is now highly priced on the art market. She frequently destroyed paintings, once describing these actions as “murder.” 

The parlor also has Faith Ringgold’s Tar Beach #2 (1988). Combining narrative painting and quilts, it depicts a memory from the artist’s childhood: apartment dwellers going up to the roof to escape the heat of a summer night. In the background is the New York skyline and the George Washington Bridge. Inspired by her great-great-great-great-grandmother, who had sewn quilts as a slave, Ringgold started making these quilts in the 1970s. A modernist photograph of the bridge taken by Berenice Abbott in 1936 hangs nearby, as well as Washington Square Park (1938), by Dorothy Eisner. She paints a sunny day in the newly renovated park near her Greenwich Village studio. Bureaucrat Robert Moses, the master builder of mid-20th century New York, was pushing for a controversial roadway that would cut directly through the park. His project received fierce opposition, which led to a seven-year battle and eventually a victory for those who opposed the renovation. 

The cheerful scene captured by Eisner is an uplifting end to this show in honor of women’s achievements and their ability to keep a personal style and a sense of self against life setbacks. But it’s also a reminder of the work that remains to be done.

She Persists: A Century of Women Artists in New York
On view until December 2, 2019
Gracie Mansion, East End Avenue at 88th Street, Manhattan; 212-676-3060. Tour reservations must be made online at nyc.gov/gracietours.

This tour was part of a NWNY Cultural Trip: Sign up to the newsletter to learn about other events