Observations: Women in Art and Design History
Seminar 2. Avant Garde Beginnings: 1900 – 1930
Recommended Reading List

Further your own research or learn more about the artists and subjects that most interest you, with our reading and podcast recommendations.

Presentation title: Bringing early 20th century women photographers to light
Speakers: Helen Ennis and Andrea Nelson
Reading Highlights:
Ennis, Helen. Olive Cotton: A life in photography, Fourth Estate, 2019.
Olive Cotton, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2000.
Olive Cotton. Photographer, National Library of Australia, 1995. Reprinted 2005.
Margaret Michaelis: love, loss and photography, National Gallery of Australia, 2005.
Nelson, A and Fineman, M. The New Woman Behind the Camera, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2020.

Presentation title: Women Designers: Collaborations, Credit, (In)Visibility and Recognition
Speaker: Pat Kirkham
Reading Highlights:
Attfield, J. and Kirkham, P. A View from the Interior: Women, Feminism and Design, The Women’s Press, London, 1989.
Kirkham, P. Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1995.
Kirkham, P. (ed.), The Gendered Object; Women Designers in the USA 1900-2000: Diversity and Difference, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2000.
Kirkham, P. (ed.), Eva Zeisel: Life, Design, and Beauty, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 2013.
Additional Resources:
Dunsmore, A. ‘Eva Zeisel: The Playful Search for Beauty’, NGV Magazine, Issue 18, Sept-Oct, 2019. pp. 58-59
[NGV Essay] Dunsmore, A. and Martin, M. A Modern Life: Tablewares 1930 – 1980s. March 2018.

Presentation title: To every age its art, to every art it’s freedom: Women artists and the Wiener Werkstätte
Speaker: Anne-Katrin Rossberg (Vienna)
Reading Highlights:
Rossberg, A.-K. Thun-Hohenstein, C. and Schmuttermeier, E. (eds), Women Artists of the Wiener Werkstätte, Österreichisches Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna, 2020.
Witt-Dörring, C. and Staggs, J., (eds.) with Rossberg, A.-K. (contributor), Wiener Werkstätte 1903–1932. The Luxury of Beauty, Prestel Verlag, Munich, 2017.

Presentation title: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls
Speaker: Margaret K. Hofer
Reading Highlights:
Hofer, M. K., The Lamps of Tiffany Studios: Nature Illuminated, Rizzoli International Publications, New York, 2017.
Eidelberg, M. P., Gray, N. and Hofer, M. K., A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls, New York Historical Society, New York, 2007.
Additional Resources:
[NGV Essay] Crombie, Isobel. Tiffany Studio: Clara Driscoll, April 2021.

Presentation title: Queer Bauhaus Women
Speaker: Elizabeth Otto
Reading Highlights:
Haunted Bauhaus: Occult Spirituality, Gender Fluidity, Queer Identities, and Radical Politics, MIT Press, 2019.
Bauhaus Women: A Global Perspective, (with Patrick Rössler), English edition: Bloomsbury UK; German edition: Knesebeck Verlag, 2019.
Bauhaus Bodies: Gender, Sexuality, and Body Culture in Modernism’s Legendary Art School, (with Patrick Rössler), Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019.
Tempo, Tempo! The Bauhaus Photomontages of Marianne Brandt, Jovis Verlag/Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, Museum of Design; Harvard Art Museums; and the International Center for Photography, New York, 2005.

Presentation title: Women and Japanese Modernism
Speaker: Megumi Kitahira
Reading Highlights:
[NGV essay] Crothers, Wayne. Japanese Modernism: between earthquake and war, February, 2020.
[NGV essay] Nagai, Mariko. Moga: the audacity of being a modern girl, February, 2020.
[NGV Video] Aitken, Annika. Taniguchi Fumie’s Preparing To Go Out: A Reflection of Changing Times, August, 2020.