The Rose Art Museum has named Brooklyn-based, Boston-born artist Tuesday Smillie as the recipient of the 2018-2019 Ruth Ann and Nathan Perlmutter Artist-in-Residence Award. In conjunction with her Perlmutter residency, the Rose will host Smillie’s first solo museum exhibition. Organized by Assistant Curator Caitlin Julia Rubin, Tuesday Smillie: To build another world will be on view September 7 through December 2, 2018. 

Building on a history of protest signage, Smillie’s multimedia practice employs watercolor, collage, and textiles to explore transgender-feminist politics and activism, questioning the imprint of the past on the present as well as modes of representation and address through language. Spanning two decades, Smillie’s show will draw together various threads of her practice and mark the debut of a number of new works made specifically for her Rose exhibition.

Established through the generosity of Ruth Ann Perlmutter and given in recognition of an emerging artist’s achievement, the Perlmutter Award will support Smillie’s residency on campus, allowing Brandeis University students to work closely with an artist on the cusp of greater acclaim. In addition to her engagement with students and the campus community, Smillie will host a number of public talks and conversations over the course of her exhibition, including workshops focused on historical and contemporary protest signage and proto- and recent transfeminist texts.

“We thank Ruth Ann Perlmutter for her generous support of the Rose and for enabling us to bring Tuesday Smillie to Brandeis at this pivotal moment in her career,” said Luis Croquer, the Henry and Lois Foster Director and Chief Curator of the Rose. “The Perlmutter Award allows the Rose to promote and explore the work of artists poised to have a lasting impact in their field. Smillie’s residency and work promises to have especial resonance within our university community, where interdisciplinary dialogues about gender and power are, given our current period of political and cultural upheaval, now more critical than ever.” 

ABOUT TUESDAY SMILLIE

Tuesday Smillie is a visual artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. At the core of her practice is a questioning of the porous membrane between “I” and “We,” an anchoring of identity in the shifting relationship between self and group.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Smillie moved to Portland, Oregon in 2001 and received her BFA from Oregon College of Art & Craft with a concentration in Book Arts in 2007. Smillie’s work has been featured in group shows at the Rubin Museum, New York, the Arcade Gallery at Columbia College Chicago, and Artists Space, New York; she was also part of the 2017 exhibition Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon, at New York’s New Museum. Solo exhibitions include presentations at the Q Center in Oregon, the largest LGBTQ+ community center in the Pacific Northwest, and at Haverford College’s Magill Library and the William Way LGBT Community Center in Pennsylvania. A solo feature of Smillie’s recent work opened at New York’s Participant Inc. on July 1, 2018.

Tuesday Smillie has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Kala Art Institute in California, Freehold Art Exchange in New York, and in 2014, was named the Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art (MOTHA)’s inaugural resident artist.  She is an Art Matters grantee, with work that has been featured in Artforum, New York Magazine, ARTnews, and Vision Magazine. More information can be found on the artist’s website, tuesdaysmillie.com.

ABOUT THE PERLMUTTER AWARD

The Ruth Ann and Nathan Perlmutter Artist-in-Residence Award is part of the Rose’s longstanding tradition of promoting young artists. Honorees include Roxy Paine (2002), Barry McGee (2004), Xavier Veilhan (2005), Dana Schutz (2006), Clare Rojas (2007), Alexis Rockman (2008), Michael Dowling (2009-10), Sam Jury (2011), Dor Guez (2012), Mika Rottenberg (2013-14), Mary Weatherford (2015), JJ PEET (2016), Jennie C. Jones (2017), and Tony Lewis (2017-18). 

Nathan Perlmutter served as national director of the Anti-Defamation League for eight years. Along with his wife, Ruth Ann, he championed the interfaith movement and sought to empower Jews, blacks and other minorities. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House in 1987, shortly before his death. He was a vice president at Brandeis from 1969-73. Ruth Ann, who has degrees from the University of Denver and Wayne State University, is a noted sculptor and painter. 

ABOUT THE ROSE ART MUSEUM AT BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY

Founded in 1961, The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University is among the nation’s premier university museums dedicated to collecting, preserving, exhibiting, and interpreting modern and contemporary art. A center of cultural and intellectual life on campus, the Museum serves as a catalyst for the exchange of ideas: a place of discovery, intersection, and dialogue at the university and within the Greater Boston community.  Through its collection, exhibitions, and programs, the Rose works to affirm and advance the values of social justice, freedom of expression, global diversity, and academic excellence that are hallmarks of Brandeis University. Postwar American and international contemporary art are particularly well represented within the Rose’s renowned permanent collection of more than 9,000 objects.

For more information, visit www.brandeis.edu/rose or call 781-736-3434.