The third Badass Art Woman Awards presented by Project for Empty Space took place on November 6th, 2019 from 7 - 10 pm! We were ecstatic to honor Carmen Hermo Associate Curator, Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, internationally renowned visual artist and organizer Marilyn Minter, and Dr. Salamishah Tillet Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies and Creative Writing; Founding Director of the New Arts Social Justice Initiative at Express Newark; Associate Director of the Clement Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience. 

Our honorees are three phenomenal women who exemplify an exceptional commitment to activism, community, and furthering equity and visibility in creative spaces. These three women have an impact that far surpasses their own immediate reach; the work that they have done and continue to do sets a precedent for how artistic communities should be nurtured.

The 2019 Badass Art Woman Awards program was inspired by Marilyn Minter’s Wangechi Gold 5 and included a sparkling cocktail bar, decadent fare, as well as some very special performances and happenings. The evening was also accompanied by a VIP pre-party and our annual visual art auction, which supports our residency programs at Project for Empty Space. Guests had the opportunity to take home original works of art by PES artists.

About the Honorees

Carmen Hermo is the Associate Curator of the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. She curated Roots of “The Dinner Party”: History in the Making (2017), co-organized Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty (2016–17), the Brooklyn presentation of Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 (2018), Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection (2018–19), and Something to Say: Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine, Deborah Kass, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Hank Willis Thomas (2018–19), and formed part of the curatorial collective for Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall (2019). She also works to support and grow the feminist art collection, and serves on the Council for Feminist Art and Young Leadership Council patron groups. Previously, Carmen was Assistant Curator for Collections at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and has also worked with the collections of the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art. Carmen received her B.A. in Art History and English from the University of Richmond and her M.A. in Art History from Hunter College. She lives in Jersey City.

Marilyn Minter (b. 1948, USA) lives and works in New York. She has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2005, the Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, OH in 2009, La Conservera, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Ceutí/Murcia, Spain in 2009, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH in 2010, and the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Germany in 2011. Her video Green Pink Caviar was exhibited in the lobby of the MoMA in 2010 for over a year and was also shown on digital billboards on Sunset Boulevard in L.A. and the Creative Time MTV billboard in Times Square, New York. Minter’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions in museums all over the world. In 2006, Marilyn Minter was included in the Whitney Biennial, and in collaboration with Creative Time she installed billboards all over Chelsea in New York City. In 2013, Minter was featured in “Riotous Baroque,” an exhibition that originated at the Kunsthaus Zürich and traveled to the Guggenheim Bilbao. In 2015, Minter’s retrospective Pretty/Dirty opened at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX. Pretty/Dirty and then traveled to Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, and on to the Orange Country Museum of Art. Pretty/Dirty opened at the Brooklyn Museum in November 2016. Minter is represented by Salon 94, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Baldwin Gallery in Aspen.

Salamishah Tillet is a writer, activist, scholar, and regular Culture critic and Opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of "Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in Post-Civil Rights America" (Duke University Press) and the forthcoming cultural memoirs, "In Search of 'The Color Purple'" (Abrams) and "All The Rage: Mississippi Goddam and the World Nina Simone Made" (Ecco). In 2003, she and her sister, Scheherazade Tillet, co-founded A Long Walk Home, a nonprofit that uses art to empower young people and end violence against girls and women and she is the featured subject of the award-winning multimedia performance, "Story Of A Rape Survivor." She earned her Ph.D. in American Studies and A.M. in British and American literature from Harvard University, her Masters in the Art of Teaching from Brown University, and her B.A. in English and Afro-American Studies from the University of Pennsylvania where she graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She is currently the Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers University - Newark and the founding director of New Arts Justice at Express Newark and the associate director at the Clement A. Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience.

The Badass Art Woman Award (BAWA) emerged organically one day, several years ago, while chatting with several other cultural practitioners in our circle at an event. We noticed a general homogeneity in the types of people who are recognized in large institutional spaces. It was very apparent that many of the women cultural workers in our industry; particularly those who cross over multiple roles beyond artist (ie curators, gallerists, academics, writers, etc.), are often overlooked. Of course, there are occasions when women in the art world transcend into the mainstream realm; however, those instances are far too few. We wanted to create an award that brought in a true sense of celebration and joy- a ‘badass’ celebration! Thus, BAWA was born. A celebration of women who do phenomenal work within the Contemporary Art world.