The Burchfield Penney Art Center at SUNY Buffalo announced it will release a self-guided 3-D virtual of the Women’s Work: Suffrage Movements 1848-1965 exhibition by artist Caitlin Cass today on social media. The installation is currently on view, marking the year-long centennial celebration thru January 31, 2021. This project has been recognized with significant support from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment of the Arts. To access the tour, go to https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=KSUwntphprm.
“The new technology allows online visitors to see the installation from 360o angles,” said Tullis Johnson, Burchfield Penney curator and manager of exhibitions. “The future of how we visit museums is adapting quickly, many are embracing the use of virtual reality (VR) technology to enhance the visitor experience and make public art more accessible.”
The self-guided tour will allow visitors to stroll through the interwoven stories of women in the installation from three time periods. It recounts the movements that led to ratification of the 19th Amendment and passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, legislation which helped secure rights for minorities. “The Women's Work project helped me celebrate and critically examine the history of women's suffrage through comics, drawings, sculpture and prints,” said Caitlin Cass. “I approached this
history with a wide and poetic lens to explore moments where history rhymes across centuries. In the process I worked through some of the lesser known storylines of suffrage history, including the racism within the movement and the relationship between women's rights and spiritualism.”
The exhibition reframes historic conversations ferried by the ancient practice of political and social satire that makes us think. “Her work makes pivotal people and issues in American history real and relatable to today,” said Scott Propeack, Burchfield Penney deputy director. “Caitlin takes icons from their pedestals. She compares, explores and presents them, extracting stories from the myths.”
ABOUT CAITLIN CASS
Caitlin Cass makes comics, cartoons, and art installations about failing systems and irrational hope. Story by story she is building her own canon to try to understand the dismal state of the world. Caitlin draws and publishes a bimonthly comic periodical under the moniker The Great Moments in Western Civilization Postal Constituent. Her cartoons and comics have appeared inThe New Yorker, The LilyandThe Nib. Caitlin was a 2018 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Fiction. She lives and works in Buffalo, NY and teaches Art at Buffalo Seminary.