2024 Yaseen Lecture: Feminism and Body Freedom

The Yaseen Lectures on the Fine Arts bring acclaimed scholars and artists to the Neuberger Museum of Art and Purchase College, SUNY to discuss their work as it relates to contemporary ideas and issues.

The 2024 lecture will be held on Thursday, November 14, as the Museum hosts a program centered on feminism and body freedom moderated by Emily McElwreath, independent curator and host of The Art Career Podcast; with Marilyn Minter, an internationally recognized artist who creates photographs, painting, and videos that offer nuanced representations of women; and Jasmine Wahi, founder and co-director of Project for Empty Space, a nonprofit organization in New York City and Newark, New Jersey, who also has a multifaceted curatorial practice.  

The discussion will explore contemporary theoretical frameworks related to feminism, bodily autonomy, and gender equity, with particular attention on how contemporary art, in conjunction with community organizing and activism, functions as a transformative agent, extending its influence beyond the realm of the arts.

Tickets: 15 USD (includes lecture and post-event reception).

About the speakers
Emily McElwreath: Emily McElwreath is an adviser, independent curator, art educator, and brand consultant. She is the founder of McElwreath Art Advisory and host and CEO of The Art Career Podcast. During the course of her 18+ year career, Ms. McElwreath has organized multiple programs, lectures, and panels featuring distinguished artists on university campuses and leading NYC venues, in addition to lecturing herself at Sotheby’s Education. She has worked on blockbuster exhibitions including Andy Warhol, Julian Schnabel and Nate Lowman at The Brant Foundation; lectured at top NYC museums including The Whitney and The Metropolitan Museum of Art; and curated multiple exhibitions with leading emerging artists. Building relationships with artists continues to be Emily’s main focus as she visits studios, connects artists with collectors, and builds partnerships within the art community.

Emily graduated from Purchase College, SUNY, as a member of the Class of 2005 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Art History. Find McElwreath on Instagram @emilymcelwreath_art.

Marilyn Minter: Marilyn Minter is an American artist currently living and working in New York City. Her work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions and has been included in group exhibitions in museums all over the world. In 2006, Ms. Minter was included in the Whitney Biennial, and installed several billboards in Chelsea, New York City in collaboration with Creative Time. Her video Green Pink Caviar was exhibited in the lobby of the MoMA from 2010–11. It was also shown on digital billboards on Sunset Boulevard in L.A. and on the Creative Time MTV billboard in Times Square, New York. In 2013, Marilyn was featured in Riotous Baroque, an exhibition that originated at the Kunsthaus Zürich and traveled to the Guggenheim Bilbao. In 2015, her retrospective Pretty/Dirty opened at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Texas. Pretty/Dirty traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, the Orange County Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum in November 2016.

Ms. Minter received a BFA from The University of Florida, Gainesville in 1970 and went on to obtain an MFA from Syracuse University in 1972. She is represented by Salon 94, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, Lehmann Maupin, Seoul, and Baldwin Gallery, Aspen.

Jasmine Wahi: Jasmine Wahi is the Founder and Co-Director of Project for Empty Space, a nonprofit organization in New York City and Newark, New Jersey. Her multifaceted curatorial practice predominantly focuses on issues of femme empowerment, complicating binary structures within social discourses, and exploring multi-positional cultural identities through the lens of intersectional feminism.

In 2023, Ms. Wahi was honored by The Metropolitan Museum of Art for exemplary social impact work in the Arts, both at Project for Empty Space and in her other roles as both a museum curator and independent practitioner.

In 2020, PES, Jasmine became the inaugural Holly Block Social Justice Curator at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, while simultaneously Co-Directing Project for Empty Space. While at the museum she curated several renowned exhibitions, including Born In Flames: Feminist Futures and Wardell Milan: AMERIKA. God Bless You If It’s Good To You, which were oriented around the thesis that visibility is the primary tenet of Social Justice.

Earlier in 2020, Ms. Wahi co-curated the ongoing traveling exhibition ABORTION IS NORMAL with a cohort of intergenerational cultural practitioners including Rebecca Pauline Jampol, Marilyn Minter, Laurie Simmons, Gina Nanni, and Sandy Tait. The exhibition will be revived and travel across the United States in late 2023–24 ahead of the presidential election, as a way to engage voters across the country. In 2019, she gave her first TED Talk on intersectionality and visibility, entitled “All the women. In Me . Are Tired”.

A lover of learning and sharing, Jasmine has taught at a number of art institutions, including Yale University, and the School of Visual Arts: MFA Fine Arts department. She is currently in the Faculty of Brooklyn College in New York City. In addition to her faculty roles at Academic institutions, Ms. Wahi also serves as both a faculty member at ART FORWARD and a Board member at CCNY at Baxter Street.

Ms. Wahi received her own art history education from New York University, where she has an MA from the Institute of Fine Arts and a BA in Art History from the College of Arts and Sciences. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her chihuahua mutt, Momo. You can follow her shenanigans and micro-essays on Instagram at @browngirlcurator.

About the Yaseen Lectures on the Fine Arts
This lecture series, which began in 1974, was endowed by the late Leonard C. Yaseen and his wife Helen, former residents of Larchmont, New York, who financed a similar series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Featured speakers have included Gordon Parks, Claes Oldenburg, Maya Angelou, Faith Ringgold, Chuck Close, John Shearer, Hank Willis Thomas, and Purchase College alumnus Fred Wilson. The legacy of the Yaseens’s gift continues today through the support of Roger Yaseen and his family in honor of his parents. The Yaseen Lectures on the Fine Arts Fund is stewarded by The New York Community Trust.

About the Neuberger Museum of Art
The Neuberger Museum of Art is celebrating its 50th anniversary throughout 2024. The Museum opened at the heart of the Purchase College, State University of New York (SUNY) campus in 1974 with a core collection donated by Roy R. Neuberger, one of the greatest private collectors, philanthropists, and arts advocates of the twentieth century. Today, critically acclaimed exhibitions, tours, lectures, and interactive programs for patrons of all ages make the Neuberger a center of teaching and learning for all stages of life.

Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, SUNY, 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, New York 10577. T +1 914 251 6100 / nma [​at​] purchase.edu / website.