Harriet Bart Abracadabra and Other Forms of Protection

A retrospective and creatively collaborative review of this international feminist conceptual artist

 
Young women victims of a garment factory fire in New York in 1911. An autobiographical progression through stages of womanhood. American veterans killed in Iraq. A giant trough filled with books and surrounded by an urban cornfield. The subjects of Harriet Bart’s art are as varied as the media and genres in which she works—sculpture, installation, textiles, painting, drawing, artist’s books. Harriet Bart: Abracadabra and Other Forms of Protection is a comprehensive look at the prolific and dynamic career of this international feminist conceptual artist. A founder of the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota (WARM, a nationally recognized feminist art collective in the Twin Cities) and of the Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art in Minneapolis, Bart has sought deep and evocative expressions of memory through several decades of innovative artistic creation and collaboration. This book, which accompanies the first retrospective exhibition of her work at the Weisman Art Museum in 2020, features poetry and prose contributions by significant writers, artists, and curators who have been influenced by her art. 

Contributors: Betty Bright; Stephen Brown, Jewish Museum; Robert Cozzolino, Minneapolis Institute of Art; Elizabeth Erickson; Heather Everhart; Nor Hall; Matthea Harvey, Sarah Lawrence College; Joanna Inglot, Macalester College; Lyndel King, Weisman Art Museum; Eric Lorberer, Rain Taxi; Jim Moore, Hamline U; Diane Mullin, Weisman Art Museum; Samantha Rippner; Joan Rothfuss; John Schott; Sun Yung Shin; Susan Stewart, Princeton U.