Censoring Women’s Art:
Why Should Women Care?
“We are feminists who believe the First Amendment is good for women.
National Council Against Censorship
Press Release
Sunday, May 15, 2011, 2:30 p.m. at Arc Gallery
1246 Folsom Street, San Francisco
This event is free and open to the public.
Contact information for panel organizers:
Hanna Regev (Tel: 415-566-7515)
Priscilla Otani (Tel: 415-606-7059)
The Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art is proud to present “Censoring
Women’s Art: Why Should We Care.” Please join us in a lively discussion about
censorship of women’s art in the areas of sexuality, religion, war and politics.
In this forum, artist panelists will share personal experiences with censorship of
their work and how they successfully averted the removal of work from public
view. Cherie Newell will discuss the controversy surrounding Hung Liu’s “Going
Away, Coming Home,” commissioned for the Port of Oakland’s first major art
installation, and the role Oakland Museum of California played in making the
artwork understood and accepted by the Port authorities and the public.
The panel will also cover these important questions around censorship:
Are increases of censoring activities just isolated incidents or a new trend,
and who is behind them? How does the current political climate affect
artists and women in particular? What is the role of the media in
censorship? Should artists play an active role in fighting censorship? Are
there benefits to putting art under scrutiny? How does it help the artists? Is
self-censorship a smart strategy or does it create a chilling effect? What
can we learn from past controversies? What can we, as artists, do to
support controversial exhibits and encourage civil debate to take place?
Why should we care?
“Censoring Women’s Art: Why Should We Care?” is part of the Northern
California Women’s Caucus for Art exhibition, “A Sense of Place” and a
companion pop-up exhibition on censorship curated by Deborah Mills Thackrey
and titled “Censorship, The Artists’ Dialog.”
PANEL PARTICIPANTS
Moderator: Jan Wurm, practicing artist and art educator. In February, 2011 she
moderated the panel, “Censorship in the Arts: A Trend or Just a Passing Fad?” at
the Performance Art Institute in San Francisco.
Panelists:
Lisa K. Blatt, JD, San Francisco-based photographer and video artist.
Taraneh Hemami, San Francisco-based interdisciplinary visual artist.
Kara Maria, San Francisco-based contemporary artist inspired by current events.
Eileen Starr Moderbacher, Bay Area painter of urban landscapes.
Cherie Newell, Director of Professional Services at the Oakland Museum of
California.
Anuradha Vikram, Worth Ryder Gallery curator, critic and educator and
coordinator of the Graduate Lecture Series for the Department of Art Practices,
University of California, Berkeley and adjunct lecturer, Department of Art, College
of Marin.
Panel Organizers:
Hanna Regev is the curator of “Banned and Recovered” and the upcoming
exhibition, “Keeping an Eye on Surveillance.” She serves on the board of the
First Amendment Project and was president of the Northern California Council of
National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Priscilla Otani is a Board Member of the Northern California Women’s Caucus for
Art and President-Elect of National Women’s Caucus for Art. Priscilla, together
with partners Matthew Frederick, Stephen C. Wagner and Michael Yochum is a
founder of Arc Gallery.
Sponsoring Organizations:
Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art
Arc Gallery
Exhibit Envoy (EE) (formerly CERA – California Exhibition Resource Alliance. EE
is the sponsoring organization of the traveling show, Banned and Recovered:
Artists Intervention)
The First Amendment Project.
The forum will commence at 2:30p.m., Sunday, May 15 at Arc Gallery 1246
Folsom Street, San Francisco