Women's Study Room in the Cottage
Sunday, January 12, 2020
Detail, Women’s Study(room) February 2020 Madeline Goodfriend Schonberger, Self Portrait (1986) Clay, Tools, B&W Portraits of the artist with her work (l to r) 1986;1960’s; Dressing Table.
Women’s Study(room) is located on the second floor of the Cottage (Note 1), on the lands formerly part of the Jane Borrowe Colt Estate and included in the Shinnecock Indian Contact Period Village Fort Critical Environmental Area; within Cultural Resources Protection Overlay District); one mile west of Shinnecock Indian Nation Territory (2).
The Cottage hosts an artist residency (post covid, Note 3): in the former Carriage House of William Merritt Chase, known for his portraits of women (Note 4), and more recently the summer studio/home (from 1948 until her death, in 1993) of American artist, Madeline Goodfriend Schonberger (Note 5, born 1908). Her two daughters, (Note 6) sold the family property including a selection of their mother’s works of art and possessions (a self-portrait, pictured left, Note 7) for Sandrow to display.
Goodfriend Schonberger’s trompe-l’oeil painted work cabinet will house a “lending library” (post covid) of books and catalogues by and about her, Sandrow, and artist friends (Note 8). Along with documentation placed amongst the pages of trompe-l’oeil hard-covered books Sandrow has assembled (pictured left, Love Tales American 1891), that relate to Borrowe Colt, Goodfriend Schonberger, and (list in formation) women artists and arts professionals. The inaugural group exhibition, (Re)collecting an Artist’s Dream inside and out the Cottage to on the road of open air studio Shinnecock Hills, includes a selection of her works along with Sandrow’s Artist Colleagues who participated in her projects…or she in theirs.
Collaborative projects with colleagues have long played an important role in Sandrow’s art-making process. Her social practice includes Artist and Homeless Collaborative (1990 -1996 NYC) that she founded and directed with an NEA Special Projects Artist Grant sponsored by NYFA (Note 9). Other projects from last century: "Flag for the Nineties” commissioned by Vera List, curated by Kathleen Goncharov (1992); The Other Side of the Rainbow: Sexual Abuse with colleague Robin Tewes (1992); SECCA Artist in the Community Fragments Self History commissioned/curated by Susan Lubowsky Talbott (1995); Creative Time’s Art at the Anchorage Material Matters commissioned by Anne Pasternak (1995). This century: (Re)collecting an American’s Dream (2006); Platform: Genius Loci Parrish Art Museum curated/commissioned by Andrea Grover (2012- 2013); Summer of Love (2013); Sketches of Local History Shinnecock Canal Canoe Place (2015); The Fabric of Time and Space spacetime (2016 -) commissioned by Art in Embassies Chief Curator Virginia Shore and Curator Claire D’Alba; open air studio Silangjana and Komodo spacetime (proposed) with Yasa Sudipayasa and Mikel Albarran; Town of Southampton Arts and Culture Committee founded with Supervisor Jay Schneiderman (2017). On site open air studio Shinnecock Hills: En Plein Air (2008); Headstand with Geoff Hendricks (2008); Free Advice with Sur Rodney Sur (2008); Enigma of a Litmus Test - coop d’etat with Caterina Verde (2008).
Matters that remain timely, urgent (Note 10), subjects of discussion in the context of the site’s ancestral lands: the role of women within Leni Lenape culture often as tribal leaders, as well as mothers, wives, home-keepers, within this matrilineal clan system. That reflected First Peoples’ beliefs they originated from a woman: legends and creation stories depicted a “mother earth”. To the role of women within the patriarchal culture when the Hills were taken, and privatized: the role of women in “modern” society was represented by two women, in addition to Sandrow, who lived here. Exercising her newly won right to own property, Jane Borrowe Colt (1863 - 1947) was expected to remain subservient to her father (and husband) but remained unmarried) with few social, legal or political rights (Note 11) known for flower arrangements. Through the years when women gained the right to vote (ratified 1920) and Madeline Goodfriend Schonberger, Wife, Mother, Artist also lived to see the Equal Rights Amendment proposed but not adopted as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.
More works about the inaugural exhibition related to this study…
Above: ”Love Tales” on her trompe-l’oeil work cabinet, August 2020
Note1: (2006) Sandrow named open air studio spacetime in homage to Chase’s art practice: (2020) she was informed “This structure moved to current location; 1891; may be carriage house to William Merritt Chase. This structure is purposed to be a ca. 1891 carriage house later converted to a residence.” Town of Southampton Historic Survey (April 2014 ): In the same report “The William Merritt Chase Homestead is listed on the State and National Registers. It is a shingle-clad gambrel-roofed building with a Doric-columned porch. Attached is a shorter, smaller shingle-clad gambrel- roofed structure. It is generally accepted that Stanford White, of the architectural firm, McKim, Mead, & White, made sketches of this structure”.
Note 2: The location is the reason for Sandrow’s social practice in support of advocating for the Shinnecock Indian Nation, including preserving ancestral Algonquin lands from desecration, and development exemplified in the first graves protection resolution (September 8 2020 in NY State Town Board approves Shinnecock Hills Building Moratorium and Graves Protection Act). Actions advocated by Nation Members with supporters like Sandrow since they successfully lobbied the town to preserve the ten acres across the road (2007, (Re)Collecting an American’s Dream)
Note 3: in process delayed due to covid19
Note 4: Metropolitan Museum of Art William Merritt Chase (1849–1916) “Portraits of fashionable women became his stock-in-trade”.
Nopte 5: Read about Madeline in the words of her elder daughter Valerie Burnshaw Razavi accompanied by photographs courtesy of Valerie and Rosalind Schonberger Brezenoff.
Note 6: Valerie Burnshaw Razavi and Rosalind Schonberger Brezenoff
Note 7: pictured in the pink floral (United Wallpaper Co circa 1948) Women’s Study(room)
Note 8: Books and catalogues by and about Sandrow’s colleagues, and also relevant to the contextual concept.
Note 9: The opening of the Cottage (pre Covid) had been timed with the New-York Historical Society exhibit “Art for Change: The Artist & Homeless Collaborative” (postponed since June 2020 due to Covid19) includes, A&HC works led by the Guerrilla Girls, Vince Gargiullo, Hope Sandrow, Kiki Smith, Judith Shea, Robin Tewes, Visual Aids. Curated by Associate Curator of Material Culture Rebecca Klassen and Senior Research Associate Laura Mogulescu (due to Covid19) opened December 3, 2021 - April 3, 2022). And the digital publication of Nina Felshin’s “But is it Art? The Spirit of Art as Activism” (Bay Press, 1995) that includes the chapter about Sandrow’s public art project Artist & Homeless Collaborative (A&HC, 1990-1996) “Making Art, Reclaiming Lives” by Andrea Wolper.
Note 10: equal rights and gender discrimination , #metoo movement , violence against women, climate change and environmental sustainability, social and cultural history
Note 11: Copied from The County Review March 27 1947 obituary: “Born of a family famous for generations in Paterson, New Jersey, Miss Colt was best known to the residents of Southampton Town, as a lover of flowers and gardens, her unique flower arrangements had gained many awards wherever they were exhibited, and for countless summers her flowers had been a delight to all her friends.”