Vivian Browne and the Feminist Art Movement

robin holder (born 1952) is a contemporary American visual artist and activist. holder is known for her mixed-media printmaking and paintings which focus on themes of spiritual and racial identity, class, social justice, and personal experience. robin holder was commissioned to create several site-specific public art installations throughout the Northeastern United States, including New York City and New Jersey. A number of her two-dimensional works can be found in several collections, including the Library of Congress, the Washington State Arts Commission, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. robin has been involved in visual arts education for over forty years as an artist in residence, a mentor, program and curricula developer, funding panelist, consultant and grant writer for various cultural and educational institutions.

Janet Olivia Henry (b. 1947; East Harlem, New York) is an artist and educator who lives and works in Jamaica, Queens. She was educated at the School of Visual Arts and the Fashion Institute of Technology and received a fellowship in education from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In partnership with filmmaker Linda Goode Bryant, Henry designed and produced Black Currant, a magazine highlighting the experimental work of artists showcased at Just Above Midtown (JAM). She was a member of the Women’s Action Coalition (WAC), a feminist open alliance that sought to address issues of women’s rights through direct action. She participated in WAC’s drum corps and currently co-leads a Project EATS drumming group. Henry is a life-long educator and has worked at the New York State Council on the Arts, the Studio Museum in Harlem’s education department, the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, the Lower Eastside Girls Club, the Children’s Art Carnival, and the Brooklyn Heights Montessori School. 

Henry has presented solo and two-artist exhibitions at Gordon Robichaux, New York; STARS, Los Angeles; Hollybush Gardens, London (two-artist with Cynthia Hawkins); P·P·O·W Gallery, New York; Just Above Midtown (JAM), New York; Lower Eastside Girls Club Community Gallery, New York; Cedar Crest College, Allentown, PA (curated by Cynthia Hawkins); John Jay College, New York; Hallswalls, Buffalo, NY (curated by Sara Kellner); Pulse Art, New York; Seventh Second Photo Gallery, New York (curated by Wendy Tiefenbacher); Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, NY (curated by Olivia Georgia); Public Art Fund’s Messages to the Public, New York; Basement Workshop, New York; and The Exhibitions Gallery, Jamaica, NY. Henry’s work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions including at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; New Museum, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, NY; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; California African American Museum, Los Angeles; Queens Museum, New York; Newark Museum, NJ; Matthew Marks Gallery, New York; a. SQUIRE, London; Candice Madey, New York; A.I.R Gallery, New York; and Artists Space, New York. 

Her work has been reviewed and featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum, ARTnews, Hyperallergic, Flash Art, Frieze, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, and Smithsonian Magazine, and BOMB among others. Henry’s work is held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Dorsky Museum at the State University of New York, New Paltz, NY; and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

Valerie Cassel Oliver is the Senior Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston in Texas. Prior to her tenure at CAMH she was director of the Visiting Artist Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a program specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2000 she was one of six curators selected to organize the Biennial for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

At the CAMH, Cassel Oliver has organized numerous exhibitions including Splat Boom Pow! The Influence of Cartoons in Contemporary Art (2003); the acclaimed Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970 (2005); Black Light/White Noise: Sound and Light in Contemporary Art (2007); Cinema Remixed and Reloaded: Black Women Artists and the Moving Image with Dr. Andrea Barnwell Brownlee (2009); Hand+Made: The Performative Impulse in Art and Craft (2010); a major retrospective on Benjamin Patterson, Born in the State of Flux/us, as well as the survey Donald Moffett: The Extravagant Vein (2011). In 2012, she mounted the project Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art, currently touring through 2016. Her major survey of drawings by Houston-based and internationally recognized artist Trenton Doyle Hancock, entitled Trenton Doyle Hancock: Skin and Bones–20 Years of Drawing, was presented in 2014 and is slated to tour throughout 2015.

Cassel Oliver is curator of the current installation at CAMH, Whispering Bayou, an ever-evolving video and sound environment by French composer and multi-media artist Jean-Baptiste Barriére; filmmaker, digital arts producer, and community activist Carroll Parrott Blue; and composer and computer interactive artist George Lewis. At present, she is organizing the first museum survey of work by New York-based artist Jennie C. Jones, entitled Compilation, slated to open December 2015.

Cassel Oliver is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and Howard University in Washington, D.C. She holds a Certificate in Executive Management from Columbia University in New York. In 2007, Cassel Oliver received a Getty Research Institute fellowship for her work on Benjamin Patterson, and in 2009, she was selected as a fellow for the Center for Curatorial Leadership in New York. She has lectured extensively and published widely.