DPAM Presents: A Conversation with Kathryn Andrews

Please join DePaul Art Museum and DePaul University’s Office of Alumni Relations for a conversation with Los Angeles-based artist Kathryn Andrews and Director of UC Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, Julie Rodrigues Widholm.

On the occasion of the fall 2020 U.S. presidential election, Andrews’s site-specific installation, curated by Rodrigues Widholm, highlights the name of each woman who has run for President of the United States throughout the history of our country’s democracy. Foregrounded in Andrews’s installation, the long list of historic women’s names is contrasted with the highly recognizable faces of the men who have won, ranging from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Barack Obama. Chronicling the nearly 150 years of women vying for the presidential seat, Kathryn Andrews’s work spotlights the persistent sexism in American politics and the urgent need for change. Generous support for this exhibition and its associated programming was provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Rena & Daniel Sternberg.

Kathryn Andrews channels the legacies of both pop art and minimalism, often juxtaposing readymades and found imagery (such as film props and photographs) with fabricated, meticulously finished forms. The reflective surfaces of Andrews’ work call attention to the act of looking and reveal the ways in which images and cultural symbols are rooted in the physical world. Through such combinations, she examines latent power dynamics in acts of desire and consumption, and addresses the implied violence of dominant image histories from a feminist perspective, opening up new, more critically aware ways of seeing. Her work takes shape in a variety of media, including sculpture, large-scale printmaking, and performance; the viewer’s body is always an implied, and often direct, subject of her practice.

Julie Rodrigues Widholm is a curator, writer, and arts administrator who grew up in Brazil, Mozambique, Portugal, Germany, and across the US. Earlier this summer, she was named the Director of the UC Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive after serving a five year tenure as DePaul Art Museum’s illustrious Director & Chief Curator, where she sparked the museum’s current multi-year Latinx initiative and led the strategic and artistic vision of our organization to promote equity and interdisciplinary exhibitions, collections and programs. Prior to DPAM, Rodrigues Widholm was curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and has organized over 100 solo and group exhibitions throughout the course of her career. In 2019, she was named Chicagoan of the Year in Museums by the Chicago Tribune and was named one of Chicago’s ART50 Visual Vanguard by New City in 2015, 2017, and 2019.