Mary Kelly: To Witness the Future

Georgetown University is pleased to present a special collaboration with one of the world’s most recognized artists, Mary Kelly (American b. 1941, lives Los Angeles, CA). Kelly has influenced conceptual and feminist art practices and shaped the way art is taught for decades. Mary Kelly: To Witness the Future marks the beginning of an academic year devoted to exhibitions and programs featuring women-aligned artists. This exhibition is the first to specifically explore Kelly’s long engagement with political movements. The works exhibited were produced between 2005 and 2020, but they reference the responses of women and women-aligned activists to key issues of equal rights in the United States and Europe since the 1960s. On view will be works she made with a range of collaborators, methods, and materials including projected video, lightbox photographs, live happenings, and “paintings” made of household dryer lint. To create these works, Kelly mined historical archives examining recurring themes of gender discrimination, racism, nuclear war, and the climate crisis, and the forms of resistance they have generated. Kelly’s work revisits and conceptually frames protests that have effected change, opening a multi-generational dialogue about the evolution of these demands, and offering a poetic way to witness the future.

This exhibition is generously supported by Maria & Ablerto de la Cruz and Helaine Posner (C '75). Curated by Al Miner.