Self-Fashioning as Modern Women Artists in Paris Art Talk with Guest Professor Paula Birnbaum at WCA

Self-Fashioning as Modern Women Artists in Paris
The Willits Center for the Arts is pleased to present an engaging lecture by Professor Paula Birnbaum titled Self-Fashioning as Modern Women Artists in Paris. This illuminating talk will explore the lives and works of three remarkable Paris-based women artists—Maria Blanchard (1881–1932), Tamara de Lempicka (1894–1980), and Chana Orloff (1888–1968)—all émigrés who forged influential careers during the interwar period.
Professor Birnbaum will delve into how these artists navigated and redefined prevailing artistic norms through their explorations of female embodiment. Central themes include self-representation, portraiture, motherhood, and the female nude—expressed through painting in the work of Blanchard and Lempicka, and sculpture in Orloff’s art. Together, these pioneering women challenged artistic conventions and reshaped both the trajectory of modern art and the cultural politics of their time.
About the Speaker
Paula J. Birnbaum is the inaugural Ann Getty Endowed Chair and Academic Director of the Museum Studies Master of Arts Program and Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at USF. She is a specialist in modern and contemporary art and holds a doctorate in Art History from Bryn Mawr College. Professor Birnbaum is a former Fulbright Scholar and fellow at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford University.
This is a free event:
The art center can be located at 71 E. Commercial St. Willits, 95490
For more information contact willitscenterforthearts.org
or call Gary Martin at 707-972-3326