Logo celebrating 1892-2017 and Auburn women

Friday, Sept. 22 isn’t just the first day of fall–it’s American Business Women’s Day. JCSM is recognizing dynamic artists from our permanent collection, who are working and making art today.

The museum is also celebrating the Auburn Alumni Association’s 125 Years of Auburn Women. Now through Nov. 11, 2017, you can find women artists who have an Auburn or state of Alabama connection on view in the Louise Hauss and David Brent Miller Gallery.

Beginning Nov. 11, curators will change out the gallery for this year’s 1072 Society Exhibition. This year’s 1072 Society donor campaign will focus on significant artwork by women artists, thus proudly adding to the 96 females currently represented in the collection of more than 2,500 objects. You can learn more about supporting the arts at Auburn here. Here are a few highlights of women in the JCSM collection.

Florence Neal ’76

Throughout her career, Ms. Neal has created work that reflects her very personal experience and connectedness to the natural world, acknowledging those changing rhythms and cyclical patterns of growth and decay, ebb and flow and chaos and order. Though she has resided in Brooklyn, New York working as a
printmaker, sculptor, painter and curator for most of her adult life, she is a daughter of the deep south and her ties to the land are visceral and provocative. Ms. Neal is the Director and Co-founder of the Kentler International Drawing Space in Red Hook, Brooklyn. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Auburn University.

a pastel drawing of a bird's nest

Janet Nolan ’64

What you might step over on the streets of a big city, Janet Nolan uses to make assemblages, ranging from small to large scale. Often, rather than having an exact plan at the outset she allows the object to dictate the sculpture’s final form. The range of Nolan’s materials in recent years has included soda cans smashed in traffic, colorful plastic bottle caps, broken umbrellas and men’s neckties. Her collection of abandoned birds’ nests fills a china cupboard in her home and has inspired drawings such as the one in the museum’s collection. Currently, Ms. Nolan serves on the JCSMAdvisory Board as chair of Collections and Acquisitions.

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