The Weisman Art Museum is proud to present Harriet Bart: Abracadabra and Other Forms of Protection, the first retrospective and monograph devoted to Harriet Bart, a pioneering artist whose powerful and varied conceptual installations and national and international exhibitions have made unique creative contributions to contemporary American art.

Harriet Bart, Enduring Afghanistan (detail), 2008 – 2015, dog tags, ball chain, chain link, vintage ledger, ink on paper, Koran stand, steel table. Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Gift of the Driscoll Babcock Galleries, New York, and the artist, Minneapolis, 2015.

Bart’s work addresses urgent contemporary issues: the devastations of war, the complexities of memorialization, the emotional dimensions of space, the gendering of labor. This exhibition reflects on art’s ability to protect and transform, to expand our capacity for empathy, and to sensitize us to histories we might otherwise forget.

This exhibition locates Bart—a co-founding member of the important feminist art collective the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota—as a leading multidisciplinary, conceptual artist to emerge during the historic shifts in 1970s art.

Featuring approximately 100 objects, the exhibition includes fiber works, paintings, sculptures, prints, artists books, and multimedia installations. A newly commissioned installation that evokes the ancient Jewish tradition of geniza, the practice of safeguarding written texts that might otherwise be discarded, will also be featured.

Harriet Bart, Caged History, 1995, mixed media. The Jewish Museum, New York, Gift of the artist, 1996.

Bart’s work represents the movements that have inspired her: fiber art, feminism, Conceptualism, Minimalism, and Jewish mysticism. She distills the complex ideas and histories that inform her practice into spare, beautiful objects and installations that express a singular vision and originality.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a major publication—edited by exhibition curator Dr. Laura Wertheim Joseph and featuring contributions from authors from across disciplines. Contributors include: Betty Bright, Stephen Brown, Robert Cozzolino, Elizabeth Erickson, Heather Everhart, Nor Hall, Matthea Harvey, Joanna Inglot, Eric Lorberer, Jim Moore, WAM senior curator Diane Mullin, Samantha Rippner, Joan Rothfuss, John Schott, 신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin, and Susan Stewart. See a full list of contributors here >>

Related Programs

ARTIST TALK WITH HARRIET BART | Watch anytime on WAM TV

Join Harriet Bart and exhibition curator Laura Wertheim Joseph, PhD, in dialogue about the artist’s life, work, and retrospective.

SEVEN FORMS STUDENT DESIGN SHOWCASE | WAM@Home – student artist photo-profiles, featuring their new garment designs and behind-the-scenes video shorts on the design process, online in late May 2020.

Emerging student designers will create ready-for-the-runway garments that explore the conceptual and material dimensions of protection, and what that means in contemporary life.

THE CONVENING | WAM@Home – online, beginning with the summer solstice on June 20, 2020

A virtual convening of commissioned writing, video, and reflections on embodied practice that considers the work and career of Harriet Bart, who exemplifies the protective and feminist act of creating worlds within worlds, as an entry point into explorations of forms of resistance and protection from patriarchal power structures.

The exhibition and catalog are generously supported by individual donors and through grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and National Endowment for the Arts.