The Hera Educational Foundation and Gallery in Wakefield, Rhode Island, is celebrating 50 years of providing an alternate exhibition space, initially for women, now for all artists at all stages of their careers.
“Past and Present” opened on June 22 with a parade and reception. The call went out to their 175 current or past members, and 34 works were submitted. They create a dazzling wide-ranging display of media by artists with deep commitment to their artist voices.
Hera’s founding context in 1974 was that art studio classes, galleries and museums were all run by men, where maybe one or two women would be added to a class or gallery roster. Women with deep commitment to their art practices and advanced art degrees rarely had gallery options. It is noteworthy that after a long inception of women imagining, founding and running Hera through volunteering and donations, the current Hera has male members. One of them, Chad Amos Self, is currently their board president. They have evolved to a no gender criteria membership, modeling the inference that artists are simply artists.
The Hera artists, from the foundation group to the current members, create work related to the challenges of the times they live in. Their anniversary calendar of events by decade or year, posted on the wall below the art, is a timeline started for their 30th anniversary and continued for display in the 50th year. It marks significant events from every decade. It starts with headlines from 1970-1980 and ends with the 2024 election year’s unknown and judicial traumas.
Personal experience, feminist battles for equality, autonomy and value are a deep vein shared by these women artists over the years. The 50th Anniversary timeline is posted on 8” x 10” paper sheets along the walls under the art. There are empty papers on the wall for interactive additions for any decade from any visitor.
The implied context of year and time is in the genome of Hera. Consider that the labels for each member include the year they joined. The timeline of events allows a visitor to compare a member’s work to events in the year they started and the year the work was created.