22 Influential Women In Art
#22 Joan Jonas
Discovered in the late 60s, Joan Jonas is a remarkable video artist. Her work has been the centerpiece of several solo exhibitions across the globe. During 2015, Jonas was invited to represent the United States at the 56th annual Venice Biennale. Joan Jonas's next exhibition will be held in Spring 2018 at the Tate Modern in London.
#21 Mia Locks
Independent New York based curator, Mia Locks has organized and co-organized numerous exhibitions throughout the Big Apple such as 2014 The Little Things Could be Dearer, 2014 Samara Golden: The Flat Side of the Knife, 2015 IM Heung-soon: Reincarnation, 2015 Math Bass: Off the Clock, and in 2015 she co-organized Greater New York with Thomas J. Lax, Peter Eleey, and Douglas Crimp. Additionally, her most recent co-curated exhibition with Christopher Y. Lew, the Whitney Biennial was from March to June of 2017 at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
#20 Rina Banerjee
Manhattan Artist, Rina Banerjee works with mixed media from a historical viewpoint. She focuses her work around a place or time in history where commerce and electronic, industrial, or ancient manufacturing began to draw massive migrations of the human population to travel in order to source textiles from natural or domestic furnishings for fashion. Her work has been included in past exhibitions such as the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017 with her sculptures as the opening presentation, and the Prospect 4, US Biennial in New Orleans. Rina Banerjee's next upcoming solo exhibition is in the Fall of 2018 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts curated by Jodi Throckmorton.
#19 Amy Sall
The founder and editor of the SUNU Journal, Amy Sall is not only the Culture and Media Studies lecturer at the New School University's Eugene Lang College, she is also extremely dedicated to the aesthetics and critical thought of African American affairs.
#18 Rujeko Hockley
Prior to being employed as the Whitney Museum of American Art's assistant curator, Rujeko Hockley was once the Contemporary Art exhibit's assistant curator at the Brooklyn Museum. The last exhibition that Rujeko Hockley helped curate was in April of 2017 at the Brooklyn Museum titled, We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85.
#17 Huma Bhabha
Contemporary sculptor, Huma Bhabha is extraordinarily tactic at making art out of ordinary, everyday objects. Bhabha's preference is to utilize humble materials like construction scraps, clay, and styrofoam. It was in 1981 that Bhabha relocated to the United States from Karachi, Pakistan to study art at the Rhode Island School of Design. Presently, Bhabha lives in Poughkeepsie, New York where she is working on numerous upcoming exhibitions for several museums and galleries in Europe projected to open in 2018.
#16 Shirin Neshat
Visual artist, Shirin Neshat is an Iranian filmmaker currently residing in New York. Her most recent solo exhibition was featured at the Museo Correr in 2017's Venice Biennale. Neshat has also directed the Aida Opera at the Salzburg Festival and is currently working on her second feature length film, Looking for Oum Kulthum.
#15 Elizabeth Alexander
Elizabeth Alexander is truly a renaissance woman as she is not only a poet but is also an essayist, Director of Creativity/Free Expression at the Ford Foundation, a Columbia University faculty member, and author of the critically acclaimed, Light of the World memoir.
#14 Julie Mehretu
Painter Julie Mehretu is on the rise with commissioned paintings that currently hang at the Haa Atrium in SFMOMA and is presently featured in Santander, Spain with a solo exhibition until January 28, 2018 that was formerly in Porto, Portugal at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art.
#13 Thelma Golden
Director and Chief Curator of the Harlem Studio Museum, Thelma Gold is solely devoted to featuring work from African American artists and has been for the past fifty years.#12 Kellie Jones
Award-winning Art Historian and Curator, Kellie Jones is also a noteworthy 2016 MacArthur Fellow. In April of 2017 Jones released her most recent novel, South Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s.
#11 Juliana Huxtable
Juliana Huxtable does it all as she is not only an artist, writer, and DJ - she also dabbles in poetry, photography, performance art, music, and video. Recently, Huxtable released a book and opened solo exhibition in New York and London.
#10 Marilyn Minter
New York City artist, Marilyn Minter's most current retrospective work, Pretty/Dirty was notably featured at the Brooklyn Museum.
#9 Jacqueline Woodson
Young People's Poet Laureate, Jacqueline Woodson, is the Brooklyn and National Book Award-winning author of the Brown Girl Dreaming memoir that is also a New York Times best-seller.
#8 Kimberly Drew
Creator of the Black Contemporary Art Tumblr and social media manager at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Kimberly Drew is currently writing her first book with Jenna Wortham titled, Black Futures.
#7 Sarah Sze
In 2003, New York City contemporary artist, Sarah Sze became a MacArthur Fellow and was also invited to represent the US at the United States Pavilion 55th Venice Biennale. Additionally, Sze has been included in countless international and domestic exhibitions in locations such as the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Her most recent solo exhibition was held in Denmark at the Copenhagen Contemporary Museum and Sze has future plans to host solo exhibitions at the Cartier Foundation in Paris and the Haus der Kunst in Munich.
#6 Reina Gossett
Reina Gossett is a remarkable filmmaker, writer, and activist. She has held a Barnard College Center for Research on Women, Activist In Residence, since 2014 and it was during this time that Gossett directed and produced One is Disposable. Presently, Gossett is working on a film based around an iconic black trans activist, Miss Major, titled The Personal Things. The film is set to release at Anthology during the Trans Film Festival.
#5 Teresita Fernandez
Large-scale Artist, Teresita Fernandez finds inspiration in landscapes, culture, and history. Her last solo exhibition Fire was in May of 2017 at the Lehmann Maupin.
#4 Lauren Hudgins
As associate director of the David Zwirner Gallery in New York, Lauren Hudgins is best known for her keen eye and sense of detail.
#3 Rashida Bumbray
Curator and choreographer Rashida Bumbray currently resides in New York with husband, Rashid and daughter, Zahara. Bumbray is the Open Society Foundation's senior program manager in charge of the Arts Exchange, an initiative which brings social justice through global art. Presently, Bumbray is busy collaborating with Simone Leigh to develop a presentation that will be revealed on the Harlem Stage this coming Fall.
#2 Merele Williams-Adkins
As the executor of the Terry Adkins Estate, Merele Williams-Adkins is currently cultivating a publication with Prestel Press titled, Terry Adkins: Recital. This book with be a thirty year retrospective on Terry's life and career. Additionally, Adkins is presently founding a performance collective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.
#1 Adrienne Edwards
Scholar, writer, and curator Adrienne Edwards focuses her work on African diaspora and global South artists. One of the many hats Edwards juggles is as the curator of Performa where she is currently organizing a fresh interdisciplinary commision for Performa 17 in New York City. Similarly, Edwards is also curator for the Walker Art Center where she will be presenting the first solo museum exhibition of Jason Moran in April of 2018. The most recent exhibition and publication of Edwards has been the Pace Gallery catalogue, Blackness in Abstraction.