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New York, NY | Curator-Led Tour of “Anonymous Was a Woman: The First 25 Years” at NYU’s Grey Art Museum
April 4 | 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Join ArtTable for a curator-led tour of Anonymous Was A Woman: The First 25 Years at the Grey Art Museum at New York University, led by exhibition co-curators Nancy Princenthal and Dr. Vesela Sretenović.
In 1996, artist and philanthropist Susan Unterberg founded the Anonymous Was A Woman (AWAW) award, making a simple, yet radical commitment to redress the lack of institutional support for women visual artists over the age of 40. She sought to provide mid-career artists with the means to procure workspace, art supplies, childcare, or whatever else they needed to further their artistic careers. For the past two and a half decades, AWAW has provided unrestricted grants of $25,000 to ten or more artists each year.
Showcasing some 50 artworks by 41 of the 251 award recipients from AWAW’s first 25 years (1996 through 2020), this exhibition explores several themes surrounding anonymity and, ultimately, celebrates the transformative impact women artists have made on contemporary art since the award’s founding. With each year represented by at least one artist, the exhibition includes works created within a few years of their grant, demonstrating the significance of the award to the artist’s growth. The range of artists featured in the exhibition demonstrates the demographic and aesthetic diversity of past awardees. All 251 artists are represented in a publication accompanying the exhibition, which also includes critical essays about the awardees by Princenthal, Sretenović, and other women scholars.
Click here to read more about the landmark exhibition.
Visitor Notes:
- The Grey is fully walker- and wheelchair-accessible, and several portable stools are available to borrow for use within the galleries upon request.
- Please note that large bags and backpacks must be checked in a secure locker, and food & drink (including water bottles) are not permitted.
Program Admission:
- ArtTable Members – $15
All registrants for this event will be provided with a
20% discount on ArtTable’s limited edition scarf
celebrating 25 Years of Anonymous Was a Woman,
created in 2021 in conjunction with ArtTable’s 45 year
anniversary and the year Susan Unterberg received
the Distinguished Service to the Visual Arts Award.
Made of 100% silk habotai, only a handful of scarves
remain in our inventory!
Not a member? Join today!
All program registration fees go toward event expenses and administrative costs for the organization.
ArtTable’s programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
About the Curators
Nancy Princenthal is a Brooklyn-based writer whose book Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art (2015) received the 2016 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography. She is also the author of Hannah Wilke (2010) and Unspeakable Acts: Women, Art, and Sexual Violence in the 1970s (2019), and co-author of Mothers of Invention: The Feminist Roots of Contemporary Art (2024). Princenthal has taught at Bard, Princeton, Yale, the School of Visual Arts, NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, and elsewhere.
Dr. Vesela Sretenović has been a long-time curator of modern and contemporary art with special interest in cross-disciplinary art practices and in bridging theoretical knowledge with hands-on experience. Most recently (2009-23) she served as Director of Contemporary Art Initiatives and Academic Affairs at The Phillips Collection in Washington DC. During her tenure, she had organized Intersections, a series of ongoing contemporary art projects, as well as monographic exhibitions of prominent artists including Robert Ryman, Ellsworth Kelly, Antony Gormley, and the first museum retrospective of Cuban artist Zilia Sanchez. Additionally, she oversaw academic partnership initiatives with the University of Maryland (UMD) and the University of Virginia (UVA). Prior to The Phillips, Sretenović worked at Brown University, the University at Buffalo SUNY, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. She is a frequent visiting faculty, teaching modern and contemporary art history and theory, and works as an independent curator. Sretenović holds a BA in Art History from University of Belgrade, Former Yugoslavia, an MA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a PhD in Humanities from Syracuse University.
Image credits:
Judy Pfaff, Ram’s Delhi, 2012. Wood, mild steel rod, melted plastics, black aluminum foil, and LED and UV Fluorescent light, 70 x 132 x 17 in. Collection of the artist, New York
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