50 Years of Women’s Studio Workshop: Curator Maymanah Farhat

Past Event

To coincide with the exhibition A Radical Alteration: Women’s Studio Workshop as a Sustainable Model for Art Making in the Sherry Grover Gallery, exhibition curator Maymanah Farhat will present an overview of WSW and the importance of this 50th anniversary with highs & lows over the organization’s history. She will share images and her inspiration for the curatorial thesis and process for this exhibition, and will talk about how non-profit art spaces like WSW (based in the Hudson Valley in New York State) are crucial to ensuring that a range of American art is being supported and realized. This presentation will be moderated by Jenna d’Anna, Senior Manager of Museum Education & Community Engagement. Audience Q & A and reception to follow.

About Women’s Studio Workshop (WSW)

Women’s Studio Workshop has produced over 230 limited edition artists’ books since their publishing imprint began in 1979. These books can have a traditional book structure with a cover and sequential pages, they can be sculptural objects, or they can be elaborately folded constructions. Hand printed and bound in their Hudson Valley (NY) studios — with the artist as the leading visionary for the project — these books are created onsite during the artist’s residency with WSW’s Artistic Director and Studio Manager overseeing the production process.

WSW books are characterized by the combination of media available at WSW, and may incorporate handmade paper, letterpress, silkscreen, intaglio, relief, photo-based elements, and/or ceramics.

Women’s Studio Workshop’s books are in collections world-wide, including eleven institutions that are repositories for all their publications: Scripps College (CA), Bainbridge Island Museum of Art (WA), Indiana University (IN), Rochester Institute of Technology (NY), University of Delaware (DE), Vassar College (NY), Virginia Commonwealth University (VA), Yale University (CT), University of Michigan (MI), The Library of Congress (D.C.), and Bucknell University (PA). The organization offers many residency opportunities including the BIMA Artist’s Book Residency Grant for Indigenous Artists.

Guest bio

Maymanah Farhat’s art historical research and curatorial work focus on underrepresented artists and forgotten art scenes. Since 2005, she has written on modern and contemporary art, contributing to edited volumes, artist monographs, and museum and gallery catalogs. She has also written for Brooklyn Rail, Art Journal, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, Vogue Arabia, Harper’s Bazaar Arabia, Art + Auction, and Apollo. Farhat has curated exhibitions throughout the U.S. and abroad, notably at the Minnesota Museum of American Art, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, San Francisco Center for the Book, Pro Arts Gallery & Commons (Oakland, CA), Center for Book Arts (New York, NY), Arab American National Museum, Virginia Commonwealth University Gallery (Doha, Qatar), Art Dubai, and the Beirut Exhibition Center. In 2014, she was included among Foreign Policy’s annual list of “100 Leading Global Thinkers” in recognition of her scholarship on Syrian art after the uprising. She holds a Master of Arts degree in Museum Administration from St. John’s University, New York.