ArtBeat: Reimagining the Distaff Toolkit @ the Mandeville Gallery

Located in the marvelous Nott Memorial, Union College’s Mandeville Gallery welcomes a new group exhibition, “Reimagining the Distaff Toolkit” beginning Thursday, October 1.

Each work in the exhibit includes a tool that was important for women’s domestic labor in the past. These tools, when recontextualized as contemporary works of art, open a dialogue between the past and present. The tools that once facilitated hard, repetitive, and often unpaid women’s labor are reborn as the Distaff artists have taken the repurposed objects and transformed them into something that pays tribute to the past while encouraging a critical analysis of society and culture from various histories.

Curated by Rickie Solinger, “Reimagining the Distaff Toolkit” features the work of 33 artists, including Judith Hoyt, Debra Priestly and Marie Watt.

In conjunction with the opening, Solinger will offer a lecture, “Becoming a Curator: Seeing Race, Class, Gender and History in Objects and Images,” at the Reamer Campus Center Auditorium on the Union campus at 4pm on Thursday, October 1.

The opening reception for the exhibition will take place in the gallery from 5-8pm Friday, October 2. The exhibit will remain on view through Sunday, December 20.