Within the mid-Nineteen Nineties, movie producer Jenna Segal‘s life modified throughout a European backpacking journey. All it took was a go to to the Peggy Guggenheim Assortment in Venice along with her finest buddy.
“This was earlier than smartphones,” Segal instructed ARTnews from her workplace on West 57th Road in Manhattan, which, not coincidentally, was as soon as dwelling to Guggenheim’s gallery, Artwork of This Century. “We had a guidebook. It learn ‘For artwork of a special type, take a look at Peggy Guggenheim’s former dwelling that now homes her artwork assortment.” As quickly as I walked in I felt this type of connection, a form of consolation.” On the present store, Segal purchased Guggenheim’s autobiography, Out of this Century: Confessions of an Artwork Addict, and spent the train-journeys in Europe devouring the e-book.
Greater than 25 years later, Segal continues to be fascinated by Guggenheim, although now she’s now not a backpacking faculty scholar, however a famous Broadway and movie producer. Her manufacturing firm and funding agency, Gatherer Enterprises, spotlights female-led productions like Suffs and Gigi, and is a serious investor within the Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League crew Angel Metropolis F.C., and the all ladies owned-and-operated firm Yola Mezcal.
Final week, the Museum of Up to date Artwork Lisbon opened a touring exhibition of work impressed by Guggenheim’s landmark 1943 exhibition “31 Girls,” which holds the excellence of being the very first exhibition devoted to feminine artists in the USA. The present consists utterly of works from Segal’s artwork assortment, which she has dubbed “31 Girls Assortment.”
Segal began accumulating within the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, after she reread Guggenheim’s autobiography. Revisiting the e-book sparked a way of responsibility in Segal. “I needed to Sharpie these ladies into historical past,” she stated. “To ensure they weren’t forgotten.”
The unique “31 Girls” present was an audacious assertion on the time, bringing collectively figures like Leonora Carrington, Frida Kahlo, Dorothea Tanning, Meret Oppenheim, and Louise Nevelson, a few of whom are solely now getting the accolades they’ve lengthy deserved. For proof, one want solely look to final yr when a Carrington’s 1945 portray Les Distractions de Dagobert offered for over $28 million, greater than doubling its low estimate and almost ten instances greater than the artist’s earlier public sale file, which was set in 2022. The truth that this pivotal second in artwork historical past remained comparatively obscure surprised Segal, and she or he started researching the exhibition with relentless curiosity.
Dorothea Tanning, Moeurs Espagnoles (1943). Photograph: Copyright The Artist. Courtesy, The 31 Girls Assortment.
Segal instructed ARTnews that she started constructing the gathering with a producer’s mindset, monitoring down books and paperwork on Guggenheim and the ladies artists she championed. She then went on an acquisition spree, scouring eBay and contacting public sale homes for outdated vendor catalogs and data on personal collections. Slowly, she assembled works by the identical 31 artists Guggenheim had exhibited in 1943. The purpose, she stated, was by no means to recreate the unique present, however slightly to reclaim the legacy of those ladies, who had been usually sidelined as muses, companions, or imitators of their extra well-known male contemporaries. Segal’s assortment now consists of a number of hundred works, an enormous archive of ephemera, and a analysis library devoted to the 31 artists.
Few collectors take their ardour to Segal’s stage—each figuratively and actually. She now works out of Peggy Guggenheim’s former Artwork of This Century gallery area on 57th Road in Manhattan, a full-circle second that underscores simply how deep her dedication runs.
When Segal speaks about Guggenheim and the 31 ladies, she turns into animated. Her fingers transfer and her eyes brighten as she segues from one artist’s story to the following, talking in intimate element as if she had been a private buddy. When she delves into Guggenheim’s previous, it’s with the element, drama, and narrative talent earned from years of manufacturing for tv and the stage.
In Might 2023, after renovations to her Guggenheim-inspired workplace had been executed, Segal determined to stage an exhibition of works from the gathering. The timing couldn’t have been higher. It was the eightieth anniversary of Guggenheim’s unique exhibition, which befell in the exact same area.
Leonora Carrington, Les chevaux de Lord Candlestick (1938). Photograph: Copyright The Artist. Courtesy, The 31 Girls Assortment.
“We opened the doorways for simply 31 hours—it was free, and the response was overwhelming,” Segal stated. Among the many 2,000 guests to that present was Nadia Arroyo Arce, the Artistic Director on the Fundación Mapfre in Madrid. (Segal and the Mapfre had been already linked after she loaned a piece to their Leonora Carrington retrospective earlier that yr.)
A short time later, Arroyo Arce requested Segal if she can be involved in letting Mapfre stage a model of “31 Girls,” utilizing works from her assortment, within the Spanish capital. Final fall, the exhibition, curated by Spanish artwork historian Patricia Mayayo, opened in Madrid. In response to the museum, the present shattered attendance information, drawing greater than 70,000 guests.
“It was a really worthwhile present, and a manner of supporting these ladies,” Arroyo Arce instructed ARTnews. “Once we introduced the present in Madrid many of those artists had been nonetheless utterly unknown. I believe that there’s a lot of exhibitions and scholarship that may nonetheless be executed.”
Now, the present has traveled to Lisbon, the place it runs till June 29.
At Segal’s workplace, a big scale, dynamic portrait of Peggy Guggenheim decorates one wall and works from her “31 Girls” assortment stand on easels across the room. On a modern, light-colored picket inbuilt bookcase, there’s a replica of one in every of Segal’s favourite childhood tales, Caps for Sale. In what might be thought-about a wierd coincidence—or signal that, maybe she was destined to see Peggy Guggenhiem’s imaginative and prescient into the twenty first century—the e-book was written and illustrated by Esphyr Slobodkina, one of many artists featured in Guggenheim’s unique present and featured closely in Segal’s assortment.
“I by no means would have identified how superb this lady was if I didn’t begin digging,” Segal stated.
Earlier than leaving the workplace, Segal returned to the bookshelves and grabbed a replica of Out of this Century: Confessions of an Artwork Addict, one in every of many that lined the upper cabinets. “Have you ever learn this but? Right here,” she stated, handing the e-book over, “it might change your life.”
