As you have probably by now heard, Faith Ringgold‘s panegyrical painting, titled: “For the Women’s House” (short for: “Women’s House of Detention”), is now being repurposed from a source of aspiration for female inmates to an attraction for Brooklyn museumgoers. According to Zachary Small‘s NY Times report (online today), the artist believes that this is “absolutely wonderful. Nobody could see it before.”
To me, this is not so “wonderful”: No matter what the artist now says, it’s a violation of the painting’s intended purpose and a subversion of its original meaning, not to mention a deviation from the terms of the government grant that had funded its creation: It was paid for in 1971 by the Creative Artists Public Service Program (CAPS), then a much admired (if sometimes controversial) artists’ fellowship program of the New York State Council on the Arts. Now the painting’s “public service” will be focused on serving the Brooklyn Museum’s art aficionados. An effort should have been made to better serve its intended audience.
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum
As described in the city’s announcement of the plan to transfer the painting to the museum: “For the Women’s House” depicts the first female president, professional women basketball players and other positive female role models, “incorporating suggestions given to Ringgold by incarcerated women.”
In no way do I begrudge Ringgold‘s overdue success: Now 91, she came of age professionally at a time when museums were short shrifting most women artists, particularly those of color. But now, “with her work recently displayed around the world as never before” (in the words of Bob Morris‘ 2020 NY Times piece), “she is having a late-life moment [emphasis added] she would not have imagined when she protested at the Whitney 50 years ago, demanding it include more women and people of color.”
A great Ringgold “moment” occurred less than three weeks ago, when NYC’s then First Lady, Chirlane McCray, announced (in conjunction with the NYC Department of Corrections) that “For the Women’s House” would be released from the somberness of NYC’s prisons, to bask in the glow of the Brooklyn Museum’s galleries on long-term loan from the city. That plan was made public in the “late-life moments” of the term in office of McCray’s husband, New York’s then Mayor, Bill de Blasio.
The city also recently announced a transformative $50-million gift to the Brooklyn Museum, to “support a range of gallery renovations and infrastructure projects.” This might come in handy in effectuating the long-overdue reestablishment of permanent-collection European art galleries on the fifth floor, instead of their previous perch in the less suitable Beaux-Arts Court, where the Dior exhibition is now preening (to Feb. 29). The first installation in the new European galleries—Monet to Morisot—opens on Feb. 4. Perhaps not coincidentally, De Blasio and McCray are Brooklynites, as is the city’s new Mayor, Eric Adams. (Has there ever been a NYC mayor from my native borough, the Bronx?)
In his Times piece, Small described the rough-and-tumble life that “For the Women’s House” had endured in prison (including a temporary whitewashing!). To me, a more difficult but more appropriate and principled course of action would have been to find a way to safely install it for the eyes of its intended beholders.
At this writing, the Brooklyn Museum’s website shows only two works by Ringgold in its collection, including this 1965 self-portrait (also in the same 2017 exhibition)—a 2013 gift from Elizabeth Sackler, benefactor of the the museum’s eponymous Center for Feminist Art:
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum
In trying to understand the Brooklyn Museum’s justification for removing “Women’s House” from its proper context, I twice emailed to the museum the obvious question (along with my other queries):
Why was it deemed appropriate to house in an art museum a painting originally intended to be enjoyed and appreciated by women inmates?
I never received an answer from the museum’s otherwise forthcoming press office. In McCray’s announcement, she also sidestepped this issue, noting that “this Administration has made it a priority to showcase unseen and unheralded artworks that give us another perspective on the important issues of our time. I’m proud that this historic painting will be preserved at the Brooklyn Museum where children can see it and know that they too can create works of art that ignite change, expand awareness and fire the imagination.”
So the target audience is now deemed to be children?!? Here’s how Ringgold had once described (in 1972) the viewers she envisioned:
If I hadn’t done it for the Women’s House then it probably would have been more political; but these women have been rejected by society; they are the blood guilt of society, so if this is what I give them, then maybe that is what we should all have. Maybe all that other stuff we’re talking about is jive because these women are real. They don’t have anything to be unreal about.
Now, Ringgold says this:
“I’m looking forward to THE PEOPLE [emphasis added] finally getting a chance to see my painting, ‘For the Women’s House,’ at the Brooklyn Museum.”
We “The People” must stop carping and move on: In the spirit of yesterday’s national holiday celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. (who would have turned 93 on Jan. 15), have a look at Ringgold’s MLK serigraphs from 2007—eight copyrighted images (reproduced on her blog) that were inspired by the civil-rights leader’s powerfully moving 1963 Letter from Birmingham City Jail.
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