Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts Curator Catherine Walworth brought together artists Louis Nevelson and Esphyr Slobodkina in a remarkable exhibition of paintings, sculptures, fashion and more. Architects of Being draws similarities between two midcentury women who were influenced by the avant-garde and constructed powerful statements of identity in a male-dominated American art world.
Catherine shares insight and reflects on this impressive project.
BEGINNING INTERESTS
Initially, I had the idea of presenting Louise Nevelson’s iconic clothing in front of her large wall sculptures. A few months later, I learned about Esphyr Slobodkina and reached out through a gallery to the artist’s foundation. I discovered there was a whole wardrobe of clothing along with interesting objects. Suddenly, a much more interesting conversation came to my mind.
When I was coming up in the curatorial field, I had three different multi-year apprenticeships at museums where I helped curators create ambitiously conceived, meaningful, and collaborative traveling exhibitions and catalogs. Architects of Being meant coming full circle and creating my own dream exhibition that would both tour and live on in book form. It’s a heartfelt moment for me.
MEETING THEM THROUGH THEIR ART
Nevelson and Slobodkina are both formidable and funny. They are the type of women that would tell you to stand up straight, while also encouraging you to break the mold. They were worldbuilders, adapting everything around them. They were compelled to be artists to the point that it consumed their homes and everything in them. The architectural theme plays out in the way they built their lives and built their art as constructors. They both embrace the lines and the curves in their shapes and forms. And both used clothing as art and as a way of strategically moving through the art world.
In navigating the world, I’m certain they must have met at gallery openings. Their work sometimes appeared in group exhibitions together during the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, particularly through groups like American Abstract Artists and the Federation of Modern Painters & Sculptors. But according to Slobodkina’s memoir, as well as the artists’ archives and the boxes of correspondence, they don’t seem to have been more than passing acquaintances. That’s why I’m taking a lot of delight in this long overdue creative conversation.
MOST MEMORABLE MOMENTS
I just can’t say enough about working with the artists’ foundations and the happy surprises they brought me. I had reached out to Ann Marie Mulhearn Sayer at the Slobodkina Foundation in early 2020, and she stuck with me through the long slog of conceptualizing this project. But when I emailed the Nevelson Foundation in 2023 and got a really sweet personal reply from the artist’s granddaughter Maria, who said she had a closet of her grandmother’s clothes, I think I nearly fell out of my chair. It was the missing piece I needed. Wrapped up in what became yet another lasting friendship.
LASTING IMPRESSION
I want everyone to enjoy meeting these women – either for the first time or in a new way – as their work plays off, and plays alongside, the other’s. I also want their grit and moxie to shine through and motivate all of us to be bold and brave. More specifically, I hope people will spend time really looking at their work and tracking their artistic moves. I also wanted this project to be about lifting women’s voices.
Available at AMFA through January 11, the exhibition will travel to the Chrysler Museum of Art in Virginia and the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut.
