The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

Eileen Myles the author of more than twenty books, including For Now, Evolution, Afterglow (a dog memoir), Chelsea Girls, and I Must Be Living Twice: New & Selected Poems 1974-2014. Myles’s many honors include four Lambda Literary Awards, the Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing, the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, Creative Capital’s Literature Award as well as their Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant. Myles lives in Marfa, Texas, and New York City.

The five poets selected for this series each bring their varied perspectives from a diverse range of backgrounds and will read selections that reflect the role feminist writers, artists, and leaders have played in their practices. A talkback and book signing will follow each reading.

This series is organized in connection with the group exhibition 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone. It celebrates the fifty-first anniversary of the historic exhibition Twenty Six Contemporary Women Artists, curated by Lucy R. Lippard and presented at The Aldrich in 1971. The exhibition will showcase work by the artists included in the original 1971 exhibition, alongside a new roster of twenty-six female identifying or nonbinary emerging artists, tracking the evolution of feminist art practices over the past five decades. 52 Artists will encompass the entirety of the Museum—the first exhibition to do so in The Aldrich’s new building which was inaugurated in 2004.

52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone is on view from June 6, 2022 through January 8, 2023. The exhibition is organized by Aldrich Senior Curator Amy Smith-Stewart and independent curator Alexandra Schwartz, with Aldrich Curatorial Assistant and Publications Manager Caitlin Monachino

This program is co-sponsored by The Ridgefield Library and the Ridgefield Poet Laureate.