Elissa Auther is the Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs and William and Mildred Lasdon Chief Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD). Previously, she was Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Colorado and a visiting associate professor at Bard Graduate Center. A feminist public intellectual, Auther founded and co-directed for the past ten years the program “Feminism & Co.: Art, Sex, Politics” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver that focuses on issues of women and gender through the lens of creative practice.

ELISSA AUTHER

So the Museum of Arts and Design historically, for me, is part of a New York avantgarde scene. It's just that it was dedicated to artists working in these historically-marginalized materials. And it continues to do that. That mission has never changed.

I especially see this with the relationship to domestic work or domestic craft. So there's this vexed relationship that these artists of that generation had with domestic experience, women's experience in the home. They're torn. On the one hand, they want nothing to do with it, on the other hand, they also see it as a potential source of creativity that should not be denied. I'm specifically thinking of artists like Judy Chicago, Miriam Shapiro, maybe the Womanhouse project, where you have young artists who are really thinking about that.

Their own experience and how they're going to negotiate that. The relationship to domesticity now feels really different to me. I don't see the same struggle or the same need, this feeling that you absolutely can't have anything to do with it. You need to reject it completely, etc. And maybe the same things with other issues of femininity and beauty and fashion, these things. I just feel like feminist women are a bit more relaxed about it at this point.

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This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Katherine Capristo. Digital Media Coordinator is Hannah Story Brown.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.