ARTIST TALK | THE SPECIAL CASE OF STEFFY GOLDNER: THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC’S FIRST WOMAN
The New York Philharmonic is celebrating the centennial of women’s suffrage in America with Project 19, a women-only commissioning initiative. “The single largest women-only commissioning initiative in orchestral history”, as stated on the website of the New York Philharmonic. It launches with three consecutive weeks of concerts, February 5-22, conducted by Philharmonic Music Director Jaap van Zweden, each featuring a commission by one of the 19 women composers. The celebration returns in the last week of May with the performances of a commission by Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth. www.nyphil.org/project19
ABOUT
Nives Widauer, born 1965 in Basel, Switzerland, lives in Vienna. Her works have recently been shown amongst other places at Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Kunsthaus Zurich, Museum Belvedere Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Austrian Cultural Forum New York, SPSI Shanghai. In 1990 she graduated from the Class for Audiovisual Arts at Schule für Gestaltung Basel. Parallel to the first exhibitions (video installations) she created live video sets for various theatre and opera houses and independent semi-documentary movies. Various Art Awards, scholarships and exhibitions followed. Over the last twenty-five years, Nives Widauer’s Cosmos grew in somehow concentric circles up to her recent work, where she plays with the interface between analog and digital. www.widauer.net
Gabryel Smith is Director of Archives and Exhibitions for the New York Philharmonic, where he has worked in various capacities since 2009. He has curated over 30 exhibits for the Orchestra, including the joint New York and Vienna Philharmonic 175th anniversary exhibit, housed at the ACFNY and the Vienna Haus der Musik in 2017. Smith received his master’s degree in Archival Training from New York University. Apart from his work as an archivist, Mr. Smith is an active violinist. www.archives.nyphil.org
Anna Mikaela Ekstrand is a Swedish/Guyanese independent interdisciplinary curator based in New York City. Anna Mikaela served as co-/curator for ’Is This Intimacy?’ (Krinzinger Projekte, 2019) and the performance art events ‘Tales Of Tales’ (106 Rivington, 2018), ’Grebnellaw: Sperming The Planet’ (House of Yes and The Oculus, 2018), and ‘Your Decolonizing Toolkit’ (MAW, 2016). She has held curatorial positions at Metropolitan Museum of Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim, Bard Graduate Center, and Museum of Arts and Design. Anna Mikaela is the founding editor-in-chief of Cultbytes. Currently, she serves as an advising curator for the inaugural ‘The Immigrant Artist Biennial’ to be held in New York Spring-Summer 2020, she has contributed with an essay on performance art(ists) forthcoming in ‘Institution is Verb: PPL Lab Site 2012-2018’ (The Operating System), and she was a curatorial resident at Curator’s Agenda: Vienna in 2019.