100 Years | 100 Women Conversation Series

A Collaboration between Park Avenue Armory & The Metropolitan Museum of Art

April 30, 2021 - August 27, 2021

Virtual Event Series

Join the Park Avenue Armory and The Metropolitan Museum of Art for a 100 Years | 100 Women Conversation Series, which will engage the project’s participants in a set of informal lunch-time chats. Starting on Friday, April 30, project partners will host two conversations every month through the end of August. Each moderated conversation features a discussion amongst a diverse, multidisciplinary group of participants that explores specific topics that resonate with the Project and are responsive to the complexities and turbulence of the pandemic era.

Participants in the Conversation Series were invited by Park Avenue Armory and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, along with the nine other New York City cultural institutions that form the Project Partner group, including: Apollo Theater; The Juilliard School; La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club; The Laundromat Project; Museum of the Moving Image; National Black Theatre; National Sawdust; New York University (Department of Photography and Imaging, Tisch School of the Arts; Office of Global Inclusion, Diversity, and Strategic Innovation; and Institute of African American Affairs and Center for Black Visual Culture); and Urban Bush Women.

All episodes in the 100 Years | 100 Women Conversation Series will be archived on the 100 Years | 100 Women Project Archive website. Information about partner institutions and participants, access to YouTube Livestream links, and archived videos of the conversations will be accessible through the digital archive.

All Conversations begin with a Native Welcome recorded by Henu Josephine Tarrant (Ho-Chunk/Hopi/Rappahannock) and end with Our Sisters, Daughters and Mothers, a Southeastern Woodlands contemporary Women’s Honor Song, created and recorded by Martha Redbone (Cherokee/Choctaw/African American descent).

Conversations

The arts ecosystem is in deep crisis as the result of the pandemic and rigid structures that have not evolved with the times. What can artists do to re-imagine a mutually beneficial system or subvert the old systems that consistently fail artists and arts workers? What do artists need to charge through these turbulent times? Abby Dobson (Sonic Conceptual Artist), Karen Finley (Visual Artist), Michele Pred (Conceptual Artist, The Art of Equal Pay Project), and Toshi Reagon (Singer, Composer, Musician, Curator, Producer) debate these topics, and more, with Avery Willis Hoffman (Program Director, Park Avenue Armory).
Murielle Borst-Tarrant (Playwright, Director, Educator, Human Rights Activist) and Henu Josephine Tarrant (Playwright, Songwriter) discuss with host Jonathan McCrory (Artistic Director, National Black Theatre) their experiences of navigating the complexities of allyship as they create theater projects with their Safe Harbors Indigenous Collective.
Shola Lynch (Documentary Film Director and Curator of the Moving Image and Recorded Sound, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture) and Warrington Hudlin (Film Producer and Vice Chairman, Museum of the Moving Image) explore the long and impressive, but often overlooked, legacy of black women in the film and television industry. In the lead up to the conversation, watch Part One of the CineFemme Cypher, filmed during the 100 Years | 100 Women Symposium in February 2020.
Stephanie Berger (Photographer), Caridad “La Bruja” De La Luz (Spoken Word Artist), Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver (Split Britches), and Jaime Sunwoo (Multi-Media Artist) exchange stories of resilience and art-making through the pandemic era with host Avery Willis Hoffman (Program Director, Park Avenue Armory).
Andrea Jenkins (Artist and Minneapolis City Council Member), pioneering politician and curator of the Transgender Oral History Project, returns to the series to engage in a conversation with Catherine D’Ignazio (Scholar of feminist technology, data literacy, and civic engagement, MIT), Imani Uzuri (Vocalist, Composer, Librettist, and Improviser), and Karina Aguilera Skvirsky (Multidisciplinary artist). Hosted by Suhaly Bautista-Carolina (Senior Managing Educator, Audience Development and Engagement, The Metropolitan Museum of Art).
In a period of lockdowns and complete cancellation of work, artists have struggled to gain access to studios, maintain creative practices and steady income streams, striving towards personal and professional liberation feels perhaps the hardest challenge of all. Gayle Fekete (Movement-Maker), Andrea Jennings (Disability Inclusion Advocate for the Arts), Risha Rox (Interdisciplinary Artist), and Katherine Toukhy (Mixed Media Artist) reflect on these challenges and more with host Ayesha Williams (Deputy Director, Laundromat Project).
Thirty-one years since the passing of the American Disabilities Act (1990), society continues to struggle with providing exemplary access to live events, creative projects, and digital platforms for disabled, differently abled, and neurodiverse audience members. Disability advocates and artists Christine Bruno, Sofiya Cheyenne, and Diana Elizabeth Jordan discuss these issues and the added challenges of the pandemic era with host, Dr. Lisa Coleman (Inaugural Senior Vice President, Global Inclusion and Strategic Innovation and Chief Diversity Officer, New York University).
Drawing on each of their distinct practices and experiences bringing unique and powerful stories to the public eye, Diana Elizabeth Jordan (Actor and Artivist), Sade Lythcott (CEO, National Black Theatre), and Sahar Ullah (Founder and Head Writer, Hijabi Monologues Project) will discuss the need for consistent and accessible platforms for underrepresented stories of and by women. Hosted by Shirine Saad (Interim Programming Director, National Sawdust).
Series kicks off with reflections on the long arc of the women’s and “get out the vote” movements, the successes and challenges of the 2018/2020 elections, and the ongoing trials of pandemic survival from Andrea Jenkins (Artist and Minneapolis City Council Member), Kate Clarke Lemay (Historian, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian), and Hannah Rosenzweig (Director and Producer, Surge Film Project). Hosted by Suhaly Bautista-Carolina (Senior Managing Educator, Audience Development and Engagement, The Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Avery Willis Hoffman (Program Director, Park Avenue Armory).

100 Years | 100 Women Conversation Series