Today, women are no longer mere muses or models for the great painters and sculptors. Indeed, the art world today is full of women artists, gallerists, curators and critics, not to mention art collectors and directors of major museum institutions. Among these bold and influential women is Helen Molesworth.
Biography of Helen Anne Molesworth
Born in 1966, Helen Anne Molesworth is an American-born curator of contemporary art. For two years, she was curator of contemporary art at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Between 2002 and 2007, she joined the Wexner Center for the Arts. She then became head of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Harvard University Art Museums. In 2010, she joined the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) as a curator. In 2014, Molesworth became chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art or MOCA in Los Angeles but was let go in 2018. Since 2019, she has been working for the "Anderson Ranch Arts Center" in Colorado as an art curator in residence.
Some of her most famous exhibitions
Throughout her career, Helen Anne Molesworth has become an undisputed figure in the American museum world with her exhibitions on major social issues. Among her greatest exhibitions is "This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s". It is about feminism, AIDS and racism during that time. On almost the same subjects, between 1987 and 1993, there was the exhibition "Photographs of Moyra Davey and ACT UP NY: between activism, art and the AIDS crisis". There is also "Part Object Part Sculpture" which puts forward the subject of the "ready-made". We must not forget "Work Ethic" which shows the deontological limits of art after the 60s.
Her popular publications
In addition to being an art curator, Helen Anne Molesworth is the editor of numerous exhibition catalogs. In 2015, she released "Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College, 1933-1957". In 2018, she published "ONE DAY AT A TIME: Manny Farber and Termite ART" and in 2017, "Duchamp: By hand, Even". Her book "How to install art as a feminist" was published by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2014. She has also edited numerous works by artists such as Amy Sillman, Catherine Opie, Jonas Wood, Alice Neel, Lee Lozano and Noah Davis.