There are those pieces that elicit delight, exhibiting an entrepreneurial spirit as much as shock value.  Vaginal Davis, a Los Angeles-born, Berlin-based transgender artist has created a generous series of small abstract wall reliefs in a blood-red mixture of nail polish, Aqua Net hair spray and other Dollar Store beauty supplies. A more formalistic abstraction is offered by Ulrike Muller’s geometric enamel on steel pictures, exhibiting a clean mastery of minimalism and grace.  

The show features more than 60 photographs including gelatin silver prints plus an archival trove of personal letters, telegrams, printed magazines, and assorted ephemera documenting the artist’s career. The photographs in this exhibition span more than 50 years, from Gruber’s groundbreaking reportage of the Soviet Arctic in the 1930s and iconic images of Jewish refugees from the ship Exodus 1947, to her later photographs of Ethiopian Jews in the midst of civil war in the 1980s.

Many of the artists represented were uprooted from the Dominican Republic and Leslie Jimenez expresses the social disparity in her Humble Heroes from the Stroller Stories of New York series.  Images of domestic workers and their charges are created by intricately weaving polyester thread on vellum.  These are small, painstaking works of great beauty.  Regina Viquerra’s large violet bouquet constructed entirely of plastic bags is noteworthy, mainly as an example of the esthetic possibility in found objects.  

At the entrance, many happy, bright-colored, large paintings hang on the wall to welcome all visitors. “Love Myself (2010)” radiates a joyous pink and blue resembling Matisse but harbors a kick of contemporary uneasiness. One sees an endless number of eyes swarming like a school of small fish on these canvases. The recognition of her work came with her shows in New York and Washington, D.C. galleries consisting of a series of “Net” paintings filled with small dots on huge canvases, some as large as 10 meters in width. 

It's an old story, one that should have been relegated to the dustbins of history long ago, but the environment in which artists like Berthe Morisot, Georgia O’Keefe, Frida Kahlo and Lee Krasner to name but a few grew up was rigidly defined.  Women were hardly solitary stars but marked by the liaisons, constellations if you will—familial, marital and otherwise—that allowed for their creative endeavors to flourish.  

To Kayleigh Starr, photography, painting, and framing are all equally vital in shaping the discussion about one’s personal relationship with the world around them. Her work surrounds the context of a window into a different reality through an object as opposed to an image. She layers her pieces with a tangible surface that is abstracted in a way that plays with perception, moving between the space of the real and the imagined. 

It’s easy to see Goldin as the heir apparent to Diane Arbus.  Both precocious, both raised by Jewish parents preoccupied with their own successes or obsessions, as young women they were, more often than not, left to their own devices.  Free to seek outlets to a world beyond the narrow scope of their upbringing, they chose a descent into a netherworld.  Whether through an insatiable curiosity in Arbus’ case or an obsessive dependency in Goldin’s, it was a dangerous journey.  

Susan G. Hammond, the executive director of the first national organization to support women’s art, has made “Our history is our future” her mantra. It’s for good reason.  A long line of dedicated women artists, given unswervingly to the mission of “fostering and promoting awareness of, and interest in, visual art by women in the United States,” have enabled members like Faith Ringgold, Judy Chicago and legions of others to find their way.  

The 21st century design industry has become saturated with organic materials and hypoallergenic textiles moving business away from strictly aesthetic elementals. Due to the rise and demand by conscious consumers, a new wave of artists focused on innovative, practical and health conscious living have permeated the trade world with certified organic textiles being at the forefront. 

A decade after her untimely death by suicide in 1971 at the age of 48, a trove of never-before-seen images were unearthed, stored in a basement darkroom on Charles Street in the West Village. And two-thirds of those images on display have been generously produced by her daughters, Doon and Amy Arbus for this exhibit.   What a viewing experience it is.