Connor Renwick: Designing Women III: MOTHER Calls Attention to Female Inequalities in the Arts

Friday, May 21, 2021

Designing Women III: MOTHER Calls Attention to Female Inequalities in the Arts

In Spring of 2017, Egg Collective opened the doors to their first “Designing Women” group exhibition. It was meant to call attention to inequalities women experience within the male-dominated design industry, to encourage diversity of representation of women and to celebrate the talented women working in the field in New York City. Women of all ages, stages of their careers working in a variety of materials, scales and disciplines were celebrated.

Event posters, Shawna X

In Spring of 2018, Egg Collective presented “Designing Women II: Masters, Mavericks, Mavens”. The show featured an international group of work from both contemporary and historical female voices. The conversation was about how women have achieved success, blazed trails and furthered their craft over time.

Carman Winant, Body Index

This May, “Designing Women III: MOTHER” is inspired by a Harvard study finding how much the pay gap that exists between men and women can be explained by the “motherhood penalty”. It’s defined as the belief that mothers are less committed to their jobs than their male counterparts – even if the men are fathers – and therefore are not paid equally. The show challenges this norm by highlighting the work of 29 female artists and designers who are also mothers, and through their work are making notable contributions to the art and design landscape. Historical and contemporary works of both fine art and design will be presented.

Charlotte Perriand, Loretta Pettway Bennett, Flow Plans

Co-curated with Tealia Ellis Ritter, the exhibition is on display at Egg Collective’s TriBeCa Showroom. Egg Collective is a New York-based design firm established by Stephanie Beamer, Crystal Ellis and Hillary Petrie. The firm also represents a small group of emerging and mid-career contemporary artists and designers. Tealia Ellis Ritter is a trained fine art photographer whose work contends with the intersecting roles of the photograph as personal document, marker of time and physical object. Ritter is a mother of two children. Hillary Petrie of Egg Collective is the mother of one.