Join us at the museum for this special First Thursday visiting curator talk!
In this lively illustrated talk, Hettie Judah explores how images of motherhood from across art history have reinforced the expectations imposed on flesh and blood parents, and how feminist artists have worked to subvert them. By turns thought-provoking, startling, and funny, On Art and Motherhood takes a fresh, expansive, and inclusive look at one of the most universal of human experiences (and guarantees you will never look at the Madonna in quite the same way again.)
Hettie Judah is a writer and curator. She is a regular contributor to The Guardian, Frieze, and The Times Literary Supplement, and writes a monthly column for Apollo magazine. Hettie is curator of the Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood, which opened at the Arnolfini in Bristol on 9 March 2024, toured to four major venues in the UK, and travels to VISUAL in Carlow, Ireland, in September 2025. The standalone book Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood is published by Thames & Hudson. Following publication of her 2020 study on the impact of motherhood on artists’ careers, in 2021 she worked with a group of artists to draw up the manifesto How Not To Exclude Artist Parents, now available in 16 languages. In 2022, together with Jo Harrison, Hettie co-founded the Art Working Parents Alliance - a supportive network and campaigning group for curators, academics, gallerists, technicians, educators, and others working in the arts. She regularly talks about art and with artists for colleges, as well as museum and gallery events. As a broadcaster, she can be heard (and sometimes seen) on programmes including BBC Radio 4’s Front Row. Recent books include How Not To Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents) (Lund Humphries, 2022) and Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones (John Murray, London, 2022/ Penguin, NY, 2023). Her next book, How to Enter the Art World After, will be published in 2026. She is currently working on a major book on art and women’s desire
This program is sponsored by the Eskenazi Museum of Art, the IU Arts and Humanities Council, and the Kinsey Institute.
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