Harmony Hammond (born February 8, 1944) is an American artist, activist, curator, and writer. She was a prominent figure in the founding of the feminist art movement in 1970s New York.
Early life and education
Harmony Hammond was born on February 8, 1944, in
Hometown,
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...
.
At 17, Hammond attended Miliken University in
Decatur, Illinois
Decatur ( ) is the largest city in Macon County, Illinois, United States, and its county seat. The city was founded in 1829 and is situated along the Sangamon River and Lake Decatur in Central Illinois. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 ...
. Later, she moved to
Minneapolis
Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the state's List of cities in Minnesota, most populous city. Locat ...
and enrolled at the
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...
.
Hammond graduated with a B.A. of Arts in painting in 1967.
Career
Hammond and her husband moved to New York in 1969, just months after the
Stonewall Riots
The Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, Stonewall revolution, or simply Stonewall) were a series of spontaneous riots and demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of ...
. When Hammond found out she was pregnant with her daughter, she and her husband decided to part ways. In 1973, Hammond came out as a
lesbian
A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexu ...
.
Harmony Hammond co-founded the
A.I.R. Gallery
A.I.R. Gallery (Artists in Residence) is the first all female artists cooperative gallery in the United States. It was founded in 1972 with the objective of providing a professional and permanent exhibition space for women artists during a time ...
in 1972; it was the first women's cooperative art gallery in
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
New York may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* ...
. She also co-founded
Heresies: A Feminist Publication of Art and Politics' in 1976, co-edited issues #1, 3 and 9, and published articles in seven issues.
''Heresies'' was founded by
Heresies Collective The Heresies Collective was founded in 1976 in New York City, by a group of feminist political artists. The group sought to examine art from a feminist and political perspective. In addition to a variety of actions and cultural output, the collectiv ...
, whose core group consisted of
Joyce Kozloff
Joyce Kozloff (born December 14, 1942) is an American artist known for her paintings, murals, and public art installations. She was one of the original members of the Pattern and Decoration movement and an early artist in the 1970s feminist art mo ...
,
Miriam Schapiro
Miriam Schapiro (also known as Mimi) (November 15, 1923 – June 20, 2015) was a Canadian-born artist based in the United States. She was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, and a pioneer of feminist art. She was also considered a leader of the Pa ...
,
Joan Semmel
Joan Semmel (born October 19, 1932) is an American feminist painter and professor emeritus in painting. She is best known for her large-scale naturalistic nude self portraits as seen from her perspective looking down.
Education and political in ...
,
Lucy Lippard
Lucy Rowland Lippard (born April 14, 1937) is an American writer, art critic, activist, and curator. Lippard was among the first writers to argue for the " dematerialization" at work in conceptual art and was an early champion of feminist art. ...
,
Mary Beth Edelson
Mary Elizabeth Edelson (; February 6, 1933 – April 20, 2021) was an American artist and pioneer of the feminist art movement in the United States, feminist art movement, deemed one of the notable "first-generation feminist artists". Edelson ...
,
Nancy Spero
Nancy Spero (August 24, 1926 – October 18, 2009) was an American visual artist known for her political and feminist paintings and hand pulled prints .
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Spero lived for much of her life in New York City. She married and ...
, and Harmony Hammond. She was an instructor at the
New York Feminist Art Institute
New York Feminist Art Institute (NYFAI) was founded in 1979 (to 1990) by women artists, educators and professionals. NYFAI offered workshops and classes, held performances and exhibitions and special events that contributed to the political and cu ...
.
[Virginia Watson-Jones]
''Contemporary American Women Sculptors''.
Phoenix: Oryx Press, 1986. p. 256.
Hammond curated ''A Lesbian Show'' in 1978 at 112 Greene Street Workshop, featuring works by lesbian artists.
She was one of the featured artists in the "
Great American Lesbian Art Show" at the
Woman's Building
The Woman's Building was a non-profit arts and education center located in Los Angeles, California. The Woman's Building focused on feminist art and served as a venue for the women's movement and was spearheaded by artist Judy Chicago, graphic de ...
in 1980. In 1981, Hammond curated and exhibited her work in ''Home Work: The Domestic Environment As Reflected in the Work of Women Artists'', sponsored by the New York State Council of the Arts (NYSCA) and The Women's Hall of Fame,
Seneca Falls, NY.
She also curated an exhibition in 1999 at Plan B Evolving Arts in Santa Fe titled ''Out West'', bringing together 41 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and
two-spirit
''Two-spirit'' (also known as ''two spirit'' or occasionally ''twospirited'', or abbreviated as ''2S'' or ''2E'', especially in Canada) is a umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe Native people who fulfill a trad ...
artists from the Southwest.
Hammond authored her first book, ''Wrappings: Essays on Feminism, Art, and the Martial Arts'', a corpus of her writings from 1973 to 1983 published by TSL Press, in 1984.
In 2000 she published ''Lesbian Art in America: A Contemporary History''.
She is featured in two 2010 films on feminist art -
The Heretics', directed by
Joan Braderman which focuses on the founders of the magazines ''Heresies: A Feminist Publication of Art and Politics'' in 1976; and ''
!Women Art Revolution
''!Women Art Revolution'' is a 2010 documentary film directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson and distributed by Zeitgeist Films. It tracks the feminist art movement over 40 years through interviews with artists, curators, critics, and historians.
Synops ...
'', directed by
Lynn Hershman Leeson
Lynn Hershman Leeson (née Lynn Lester Hershman; born June 17, 1941) is an American multimedia artist and filmmaker. Her work with technology and in media-based practices is credited with helping to legitimize digital art forms. Her interests inc ...
.
In 1984, she moved to
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...
,
where she lives and works today.
As a tenured full professor, Hammond taught painting, combined media and graduate critiques at the
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it ...
in
Tucson
Tucson (; ; ) is a city in Pima County, Arizona, United States, and its county seat. It is the second-most populous city in Arizona, behind Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix, with a population of 542,630 in the 2020 United States census. The Tucson ...
, from 1988 to 2005.
Hammond continues to teach workshops and writes, curates, and lectures on feminist, lesbian, and queer art.
Works
In her art, Hammond asserts that traditionally
feminine
Femininity (also called womanliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and Gender roles, roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as Social construction of gender, socially constructed, and there is also s ...
qualities are worthwhile artistic subjects and means for artistic creation. To this end, for example, she created sculptures in the early 1970s featuring swaths of fabric, a traditionally feminine material, as a primary material. There were four fabric series: ''Bags'' (1971), ''Presences'' (1972), ''Floorpieces'' (1973), and ''Wrapped'' ''Sculptures'' (1977–1984).
Harmony Hammond's paintings themselves show how they were made and are almost all abstract.
In the 1990s Hammond primarily made mixed-media installations that incorporated a range of traditionally non-art materials (such as human hair and corrugated roofing) with traditional oil painting, and in the first decade of the 2000s, her focus was on making monochrome abstract paintings.
Presences
This was a series of works created in 1971–1972.
It was her first major series. Seven of these pieces are included in her Material Witness collection. These artworks are fabric scraps soaked in paint, densely sewn together and on a hanger strung from the ceiling. Presences was presented at Harmony Hammond's first solo exhibition in New York in 1973. The fabric is all different lengths with some strips being layered or tied together to be longer. "Six fabric sculptures appearing slightly larger than life size hang from the ceiling and graze the floor, inviting viewers to join them. Paint applied by artist Harmony Hammond imparts earthy tones to these layered scraps of cloth. Spots of bright color and pattern peek out here and there—plaids, polka dots, florals."
Hammond's intention behind the works was to capture the history of women being creative and claiming space.
Most of the fabric scraps used to create the pieces in the ''Presences'' series were sourced from members of a women's group Hammond was involved with.
Floorpieces
In 1973, Hammond created a series of artworks titled ''Floorpieces.''
Hammond created these rugs through a traditional braiding style with colorful, remnant fabric she had found in dumpsters in New York's
garment district.
The rag-rugs were then painted selectively with
acrylic pigment and were displayed on the ground like rugs. Most of Hammond's ''Floorpieces'' were approximately 5 ft. (1.5 m) in diameter and almost 2 in. (5 cm) thick. The size and detail of Hammond's artwork is hard to obtain from reproductions and photographs, therefore insisting on the importance of a present viewer. Hammond's ''Floorpieces'' challenged the binary between
Art
Art is a diverse range of cultural activity centered around ''works'' utilizing creative or imaginative talents, which are expected to evoke a worthwhile experience, generally through an expression of emotional power, conceptual ideas, tec ...
and
Craft
A craft or trade is a pastime or an occupation that requires particular skills and knowledge of skilled work. In a historical sense, particularly the Middle Ages and earlier, the term is usually applied to people occupied in small scale pr ...
; they also continued the artist's exploration of the space between painting and sculpture.
[^ Mendelsohn, Meredith (2019-07-09). "Harmony Hammond: Material Witness, Five Decades of Art". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 2020-04-07.] The creation of the ''Floorpieces'' coincided with Hammond coming out as a lesbian.
Near Monochromes
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Hammond's work began to include fewer sculptural elements, taking on more traditionally painterly forms and focusing more heavily on partially hidden forms beneath layers of paint.
Regarding the evolution of her work, Hammond stated: "Over the years, the paintings have gotten simpler, more condensed, with fewer materials in any given piece."
The works include materials such as "straps, grommets, bandage-like strips of cloth, or rough burlap patches with fraying edges and pronounced seams."
Recognition
Hammond has had more than 40 solo exhibitions internationally. Her works have been shown in the
Tucson Museum of Art
Tucson (; ; ) is a city in Pima County, Arizona, United States, and its county seat. It is the second-most populous city in Arizona, behind Phoenix, with a population of 542,630 in the 2020 United States census. The Tucson metropolitan ...
,
Museum of Contemporary Art Museum of Contemporary Art (often abbreviated to MCA, MoCA or MOCA) may refer to:
Africa
* Museum of Contemporary Art (Tangier), Morocco, officially le Galerie d'Art Contemporain Mohamed Drissi
Asia East Asia
* Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai ...
,
Gemeentemuseum Den Haag
The Kunstmuseum Den Haag is an art museum in The Hague in the Netherlands, founded in 1866 as the Museum voor Moderne Kunst. Later, until 1998, it was known as Haags Gemeentemuseum, and until the end of September 2019 as Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. I ...
, the
Vancouver Art Gallery
The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) is an art museum in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The museum occupies a adjacent to Robson Square in downtown Vancouver, making it the largest art museum in Western Canada by building size. Designed by Fr ...
,
National Academy Museum, and
Museo Tamayo. Her works are also included in permanent collections in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
, the
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill, Minneapolis, Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in ...
, the
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...
, the
National Museum of Women in the Arts
The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), located in Washington, D.C., is "the first museum in the world solely dedicated" to championing women through the arts. NMWA was incorporated in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay. Since openi ...
, the
Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...
, the
New Mexico Museum of Art
The New Mexico Museum of Art is an art museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Fe governed by the state of New Mexico, United States. It is one of four state-run museums in Santa Fe that are part of the Museum of New Mexico. It is located one bloc ...
, and the
Wadsworth Atheneum
The Wadsworth Atheneum is an art museum in Hartford, Connecticut. The Wadsworth is noted for its collections of European Baroque art, ancient Egyptian and Classical bronzes, French and American Impressionism, Impressionist paintings, Hudson Riv ...
.
She has received
fellowships
A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned or professional societies, the term refers ...
from the
National Endowment of the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the feder ...
, the
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The foundation was created by Standard Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller (" ...
, the
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation is a private foundation formed in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died on April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are Gr ...
, the
Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation
The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation was established in 1976. It is an American nonprofit organization that provides funding for the arts.
History
The Gottlieb Foundation was established after Adolph Gottlieb’s death in 1974. Esther Gottlie ...
, and the
Pollock-Krasner Foundation
The Pollock-Krasner Foundation was established in 1985 for the purpose of providing funding to visual artists internationally to further their artistic practices. It was established at the bequest of Lee Krasner, who was an American abstract expr ...
among others.
In 2013, the
Women's Caucus for Art
The Women's Caucus for Art (WCA), founded in 1972, is a non-profit organization based in New York City, which supports women artists, art historians, students, educators, and museum professionals. The WCA holds exhibitions and conferences to promo ...
announced that Hammond would be one of the 2014 recipients of the organization's Lifetime Achievement Award. The Harmony Hammond Papers were acquired by the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles in 2016.
''Harmony Hammond: Material Witness, Five Decades of Art'', Hammond's first comprehensive museum survey, took place at the
Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. The exhibit traveled to the Sarasota Art Museum in
Sarasota, Florida
Sarasota () is a city in and the county seat of Sarasota County, Florida, United States. It is located in Southwest Florida, the southern end of the Tampa Bay area, and north of Fort Myers, Florida, Fort Myers and Punta Gorda, Florida, Punta Gord ...
, in 2020.
The exhibit was accompanied by the first hardcover monograph written on Hammond's work, with an essay by the exhibit's curator, Amy Smith-Stewart.
Hammond's work was included in the 2021 exhibition ''
Women in Abstraction
Women in Abstraction. Another History of Abstraction in the 20th Century or ''Elles font l'abstraction. Une autre histoire de l'abstraction au XXe siècle'' was a major exhibition of 20th century abstract art created by women. It was curated by ...
'' at the
Centre Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...
.
Notable works in public collections
*''Hug'' (1978);
Whitney Museum
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...
, New York
*''Durango'' (1979);
Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...
*''Hunkertime'' (1980);
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...
, New York
*''The Meeting of Passion and Intellect'' (1981);
National Museum of Women in the Arts
The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), located in Washington, D.C., is "the first museum in the world solely dedicated" to championing women through the arts. NMWA was incorporated in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay. Since openi ...
, Washington, D.C.
*''Radiant Affection'' (1983–1984);
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
, New York
*''Chicken Lady'' (1989);
Minneapolis Institute of Art
The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the List of largest art museums, largest ar ...
*''Tiny Aperture #3'' (2013);
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art
The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (LLMA), formerly the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, is a visual art museum in SoHo, Lower Manhattan, New York City. It mainly collects, preserves and exhibits visual arts created by LGBTQ artists or ...
, New York
Publications
*
*
References
Further reading
Books
*
Interviews
*
*
*
External links
Official website*
ttps://www.alexandergray.com/artists/harmony-hammond Hammond's gallery, Alexander GrayHarmony Hammond prints at 10 Grand PressHarmony Hammond on her 2019 exhibit at the White Cube Gallery
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hammond, Harmony
American feminist artists
1944 births
Living people
Artists from Chicago
Artists from New Mexico
University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts alumni
University of Arizona faculty
LGBTQ people from Illinois
20th-century American textile artists
21st-century American painters
21st-century American textile artists
21st-century American women textile artists
Textile artists from Illinois
Heresies Collective members
American women academics
American lesbian artists
20th-century American women textile artists
20th-century American LGBTQ people
21st-century American LGBTQ people
Textile artists from New Mexico
Lesbian painters
Painters from New Mexico
21st-century American women painters
20th-century American painters
20th-century American women painters