PLEASE NOTE: The information below is for our winter 2024 season, which is now complete.
Check back for details on our next season of Winter Series coming in winter of 2025.

Join Joanna Pinsky for an in-depth view of six innovative female artists whose work has impacted different artistic and cultural communities. This series includes two online programs and two in-person visits to Chicago museums. Online, we’ll discuss works by Yayoi Kusama, Pacita Abad, Magdalena Abakanowicz and Lee Bontecou. And in person, we’ll delve into Ruth Duckworth’s ceramics and Faith Ringgold’s multimedia works in two important museum exhibitions.

NEW! Register for our online sessions and share the experience with a friend for FREE.

Registrants for our online sessions of Winter Series on January 31 and February 7 are entitled to one additional free registration for a friend. Additional participant must be new to Art Encounter. Details provided upon registration.

Session 1: Life as Unity at the Smart Museum of Art, January 24, 2024
Ruth Duckworth
Meeting in person!

Working with clay, Ruth Duckworth (1919–2009) pushed the boundaries of ceramic art, creating monumental abstract sculptures and murals along with small, intimate pieces and functional works. Since her father was Jewish, she fled to England to study art in the 1930s. Originally a stone mason, she turned to ceramics in her 40’s. An invitation to teach at the University of Chicago brought her to this city, where she continued her exploration of the medium for the rest of her life. In this important retrospective, we’ll discuss the range of her art using diverse ceramic materials including porcelain, which she describes as, “a very temperamental material. I’m constantly fighting it. It wants to lie down, you want it to stand up. I have to make it do what it doesn’t want to do. But there’s no other material that so effectively communicates both fragility and strength.”

Meet at the Smart Museum of Art, 5550 Greenwood Ave., Chicago.

Session 2: Visual Patterns, January 31, 2024
Yayoi Kusama and Pacita Abad
Meeting online! 

These two artists have increasingly received international recognition. Born in 1929, Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama moved to New York in 1957 to explore her fascination with infinity by producing paintings, sculptures, and performance art events. While she exhibited alongside major pop artists and her performance pieces, considered outrageous, drew attention in the 1960’s, she decided to return to Japan in 1973. In 1977, by her own free will, she entered a mental hospital where she still resides. Regaining recognition in the 1990’s, she represented Japan in the 1993 Venice Biennale. 

The daughter of a congressman who protested the Marcos regime, Filipino artist Pacita Abad was expected to go into law and politics, but a move to San Francisco changed her life, and a short marriage to an artist inspired her to pursue art. What remained was a commitment to social activism, and in a remarkable life that included worldwide travel, especially to underdeveloped countries, she created major artworks. She is known for her trapuntos: maximalist hanging textiles embroidered with mirrors from India, cowrie shells from Papua New Guinea, beaded fabric from Indonesia, buttons from the Philippines, and other travel-gathered bricolage.

Online programs will include recommended videos of the artists.

Share this session with a friend! Email info@artencounter.org to take advantage of this offer.

Session 3: Material Exploration, February 7, 2024
Magdalena Abakanowicz and Lee Bontecou
Meeting online!

Discover unique approaches to three-dimensional work by two exceptional artists. Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930–2017), the creator of Agora Big Foot, the installation of 106 headless, armless iron sculptures in Grant Park, began her career working in fiber. With a radical approach to textiles, she created monumental wall pieces, later bringing them off the wall into three-dimensional space. Her work expanded to humanoid sculptures in burlap and gigantic mixed media pieces in wood and metal. Born to a noble Polish family whose parents were part of the Polish resistance to the Nazis, Abakanovicz’s work often speaks to the human condition.

Lee Bontecou (1931–2022) achieved early recognition for her large-scale three-dimensional wall sculptures made from army canvases attached with wires to metal supports. Additionally, she created drawings with soot. After exhibiting and being collected by international museums, the artist dropped out of the spotlight by moving to Pennsylvania and withdrawing from the art world. She never stopped working, producing an imaginative body of wall pieces, mobiles and sculptures in a new direction. Finally agreeing to show her work, a major retrospective was coordinated by curators at the MCA Chicago and Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum. 

Online programs will include recommended videos of the artists.

Share this session with a friend! Email info@artencounter.org to take advantage of this offer.

Session 4: American People at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, February 14, 2024
Faith Ringgold
Meeting in person!

PLEASE NOTE: Registration for this session has reached capacity, and is now closed.

Even if you’ve seen this exhibit, it’s worth seeing it again! We will probe into Faith Ringgold’s work to see how her choices of materials and mediums are instrumental to the content of the work. During her long career, Ringgold, born in 1930, has created paintings, story quilts, sculptures, books, and performance pieces based on social action. As a black artist, she speaks to the history of enslavement and prejudice while celebrating Black American culture. As a woman, her work talks about issues of feminism and identity. Through her highly personal and approachable work, we’ll travel back to the civil rights era and forward to current issues of gender, politics, and racism in this large, innovative exhibition.

Meet at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 East Chicago Ave., Chicago, northeast ground level corner.