New York

Featuring spectacular examples of needlework and other ornamental arts made by American girls in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Locating Girlhood: Place and Identity in Early American “Schoolgirl” Art sheds new light on a rich but understudied genre, offering one of the most significant presentations on the subject in recent memory. This major loan exhibition brings together approximately 100 exceptional objects from over 35 museums and private collections nationwide, uniting celebrated masterpieces with remarkable lesser-known gems rarely seen by the public.

When films were silent, fashion spoke volumes. Goddesses in the Machine reveals the untold story of costume and style in early Hollywood, from actors wearing their own clothes to the birth of the movie costume designer. The first major exhibition to explore fashion in American silent film, Goddesses in the Machine shows how silent films transformed fashion from personal expression into powerful storytelling, creating the blueprint for modern movie glamour. Bringing together a selection of rare surviving objects from the advent of cinema, the exhibition highlights the behind-the-scenes work of famous designers such as Travis Banton, Henri Bendel, Clare West, and Lucile, Lady Duff-Gordon, as well as lesser-known names including Madame Frances, I. Miller, Natacha Rambova, and Lilian St. Cyr. A vibrant display of ensembles and accessories at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery will be enriched by accompanying film clips and works on paper including photographs, posters, film stills, and costume design sketches.

Drawing its subtitle, Past Continuous, from a 1976 painting by Krasner, the exhibition traces parallel lives and practices—forged first by lived experience, then shadowed by memory. Krasner, born in Brooklyn to Jewish immigrant parents from what is now Ukraine, and Pollock, raised in Los Angeles and the American West, brought specific geographies and inheritances into a shared artistic context. Their early paths traced distinct strands of American modernism that would ultimately converge in the rupture known as Abstract Expressionism, a movement that valued the translation of inner feelings into dramatic visual action. In the wake of World War II, artists asked why art mattered and what it could be. For Pollock, his breakthrough was the “drip” technique, a radical mode of painting that flourished in a condensed but prolific period. Krasner’s varied practice was typified by ceaseless explorations of abstraction, often cued by her abiding interest in the possibilities of nature and color.

The exhibition offers a detailed overview of Drexler’s landmark Pop work of the 1960s. Featuring private and institutional loans, the show reunites several important works and series from this generative decade. To augment these iconic paintings, the show also presents a selection of never-before-seen drawings, objects, source imagery, and journals. These materials—uncovered through newly conducted archival research—provide, for the first time, a full picture of Drexler’s creative activities, tracing the depth and complexity of her sui generis approach to the appropriated image.