Women Unite

In 1971, 27 artists, all of them male (Vito Acconci, Richard Serra, William Wegman, Dan Graham, and so on), were invited by the curator Willoughby Sharp to contribute an “action” for a day-long project on an abandoned pier in lower Manhattan. Graham was photographed while making a series of photographs; Bill Beckley played 8 notes on a trumpet; George Trakas paddled around the pier and made drawings. Now, some 45 years later, Cecilia Alemani, the Curator and Director of High Line Art, has reprised that project with some significant changes. Her iteration took place over the course of several months this summer on Pier 54, which is located on the Hudson River just below the High Line. And all of the 27 participating artists were women. Francisca Benitez performed a sign language soliloquy; Sharon Hayes spelled out “WOMEN OF THE WORLD UNITE, they said” in twelve-by-fifteen foot chalk letters; and in a fitting finale, Carol Bove invited all of her fellow artists for wine, beer and conversation. (Liz Ligon’s photo documentation of the entire project is on view at 120 Eleventh Avenue, through December 13th.) In some ways Alemani’s project is a critique of the original Pier 18 show (or more specifically, of the machismo art world of the time); but in others it’s simply a love letter. As the artist Jill Magid writes to Wolfgang Stoerchle, in one of a series of 27 postcards to the original participants: “I think I’m falling for you.”