Harmony Hammond facts for kids

Harmony Hammond (born February 8, 1944) is an American artist, activist, curator, and writer. She played a big part in starting the feminist art movement in New York during the 1970s.

Early Life and Education

Harmony Hammond was born on February 8, 1944, in Hometown, Illinois. When she was 17, Hammond went to Miliken University in Decatur, Illinois. Later, she moved to Minneapolis and studied at the University of Minnesota. Hammond earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in painting in 1967.

Career and Activism

In 1969, Hammond moved to New York. She became a key figure in the art world.

Harmony Hammond helped create the A.I.R. Gallery in 1972. This was the first art gallery in New York run by women artists working together. She also helped start Heresies: A Feminist Publication of Art and Politics in 1976. This magazine focused on art and politics from a feminist point of view. Hammond wrote articles for several issues. She also taught at the New York Feminist Art Institute.

Hammond organized an art show called A Lesbian Show in 1978. It featured artworks by lesbian artists. She was also one of the artists shown in the "Great American Lesbian Art Show" in 1980. In 1981, Hammond curated Home Work: The Domestic Environment As Reflected in the Work of Women Artists. This show explored how women artists viewed home life. In 1999, she curated Out West in Santa Fe. This exhibition brought together 41 artists from the Southwest who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and two-spirit.

Hammond has written books about art. Her first book, Wrappings: Essays on Feminism, Art, and the Martial Arts, came out in 1984. In 2000, she published Lesbian Art in America: A Contemporary History. She also appeared in two films about feminist art in 2010. These films were The Heretics and !Women Art Revolution.

In 1984, Harmony Hammond moved to New Mexico, where she still lives and works today. She taught painting and mixed media at the University of Arizona in Tucson from 1988 to 2005. Hammond continues to teach workshops and writes about feminist, lesbian, and queer art. She also organizes art shows and gives lectures.

Artistic Works

The Meeting of Passion and Intellect (1981), an example of the artist's wrapped sculptures, at the National Gallery of Art in 2022

Harmony Hammond believes that qualities often seen as "feminine" can be important subjects and tools for art. For example, in the early 1970s, she made sculptures using fabric. Fabric is a material often linked to traditional women's crafts. She created four series using fabric: Bags (1971), Presences (1972), Floorpieces (1973), and Wrapped Sculptures (1977–1984). Hammond's paintings are mostly abstract. They often show how they were made. In the 1990s, she created mixed-media installations. These works used unusual materials like human hair and corrugated roofing, along with traditional oil paint. In the early 2000s, she focused on making abstract paintings with mostly one color.

Presences Series

The Presences series was created in 1971–1972. It was her first major series of artworks. Seven of these pieces are part of her Material Witness collection. These artworks are made from fabric scraps soaked in paint. They are sewn together tightly and hung from the ceiling. Presences was shown at Harmony Hammond's first solo art exhibition in New York in 1973. The fabric pieces are all different lengths. Some strips are layered or tied together to make them longer. These sculptures invite viewers to feel like they are part of the artwork. Hammond wanted these works to show the history of women's creativity and their right to take up space. Most of the fabric scraps came from members of a women's group Hammond was involved with.

Floorpieces Series

In 1973, Hammond created a series of artworks called Floorpieces. She made these pieces like traditional braided rugs. She used colorful fabric scraps she found in dumpsters in New York's garment district. The rag-rugs were then painted with acrylic paint. They were displayed on the ground, just like rugs. Most of Hammond's Floorpieces were about 5 feet (1.5 meters) wide and almost 2 inches (5 cm) thick. It is hard to fully appreciate the size and detail of these works from pictures. This means it is important to see them in person. Hammond's Floorpieces questioned the difference between fine Art and Craft. They also continued her exploration of the space between painting and sculpture.

Near Monochromes

During the 1990s and early 2000s, Hammond's art became less sculptural. Her works looked more like traditional paintings. She focused on forms that were partly hidden under layers of paint. Hammond explained that her paintings became "simpler, more condensed, with fewer materials in any given piece." These works include materials like "straps, grommets, bandage-like strips of cloth, or rough burlap patches with fraying edges and pronounced seams."

Recognition and Awards

Harmony Hammond has had more than 40 solo art exhibitions around the world. Her artworks have been shown in many famous museums. These include the Tucson Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her works are also part of the permanent collections in places like the Walker Art Center and the Brooklyn Museum.

She has received many important fellowships and awards. These include grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 2013, the Women's Caucus for Art announced that Hammond would receive their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. Her personal papers were added to the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles in 2016.

Harmony Hammond: Material Witness, Five Decades of Art was her first big museum show. It took place at the Aldrich Museum in Connecticut. The exhibit later traveled to the Sarasota Art Museum in Sarasota, Florida, in 2020. A book about Hammond's work was published with the exhibit.

Hammond's work was also part of the 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Public Collections

• Art Institute of Chicago, IL
• Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
• Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO
• Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY
• Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York, NY
• Leslie-Lohman Museum, New York, NY
• Library of Congress, Washington, DC
• Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London, CT
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
• Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
• The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
• National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC
• New Mexico Arts, State Public Art Collection, NM
• New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM
• Orlando Museum of Art, FL
• Phoenix Art Museum, AZ
• Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Tucson Museum of Art, AZ
• Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT
• Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
• Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC
• Weisman Museum, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

See also

In Spanish: Harmony Hammond para niños