I Like Feminism and Feminism Likes Me

Abstract

Abstract When high-end block buster venues are the primary focus of curatorial reflections, even for feminist writers, what does the poor feminist curator have to say? What does curatorial “care work” look like from a different place? One semester the gallery budget was slashed so brutally, we had to give up the insurance. So, I co-wrote a two act play about Joseph Beuys’s first trip to the US, in 1974, when he asked to meet with “American feminists.” I Like Feminism and Feminism Likes Me (2020) was part slapstick, part exaggerated amateur dramatics, part allegorical attack on male charisma in the New York City borough that elected Trump (Staten Island), and part feminist revenge tragedy. In this paper I reanimate the project through the affective scrim of my experience of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is an experiment in teaching and writing art history through the body: mine, theirs, maybe yours as well.