NEW YORK
Brenda Miller
Works from the 70s
January 18 - March 20, 2025
At Zürcher Gallery, New York
Photo by Hilla Becher.
The exhibition catalog with an essay by Lucy R. Lippard can be viewed here.
“What to See in N.Y.C. Galleries in February” by Jillian Steinhauer for The New York Times.
Featured on artforum.com’s “Must-See Shows” list for New York.
Zürcher Gallery is thrilled to rediscover the work of Brenda Miller (b. 1941 in the Bronx, NY) who has not been shown in a New York art gallery since 1994. Brenda Miller is best known for her sisal wall sculptures, her typewriting, and her Alphabet rubber-stamped ink and pencil on wall or paper she has made since 1969-70 and exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1975), Museum of Modern Art (1973) and later at P.S.1.
In this first solo show at Zürcher Gallery, we are presenting a selection of these 2 bodies of works from the 70s as well as a new Sisal work Entassis Too, 2024 created after Entassis, 1971, shown at the Museum of Modern Art, NY, and reproduced in the catalog of the Gedok American Woman Artist Show, Kunsthaus, Hamburg, Germany.
Brenda Miller asserts that she is a feminist. She was actively involved with the women’s movement in New York in the 70s. She then co-founded the Ad-Hoc Women Artists Committee with Faith Ringold, Poppy Johnson, and Lucy Lippard. Her earliest work combined gender politics with Post-Minimal concerns of materials and process, frequently occupying a space between drawing and sculpture. For years, she has worked with repurposed materials like sisal and rubber stamps as a means to introduce content to abstraction. Brenda Miller was part of 26 Contemporary Women Artists at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT which was probably the FIRST American museum show of Women artists of “second wave" feminism. Her work shared approach, technique, or content to some degree with the work of Alice Adams, Carl Andre, Hanne Darboven, Jackie Ferrara, Nancy Holt, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Mary Miss, Robert Smithson, Lawrence Weiner, and Jacky Winsor.
Lucy Lippard writes in Art in America, Vol 64, N°3 ( May/June 1976):
"Brenda Miller: Woven, Stamped. To a Minimalist vocabulary of formal qualities – repetition, symmetry, literality - Brenda Miller has added a distinct personal flavor: of aggressive feeling in her twine works and, in her alphabet pieces, of paradoxical obsessiveness and tranquility."
Brenda Miller chooses a “specific” grammar to work within. The Sisal pieces and the Alphabet works are based on an underlying preconceived grid system. She chose the alphabet for its linear marks - curves, diagonals, horizontals, verticals. She starts with A and ends with Z. She uses rubber stamps to print each letter over and over again but leaves out the last letter, then the next to last and so on, each time around. She also uses a “non -reproducible" blue pencil as an editing tool in the drawing of the grid. The alphabet and its physical structure, the number of characters, and the numerical sequence of the characters are used to determine the system by which each piece is constructed. The repetition, the overlay, the number of impressions, the superimposition, and the accumulation cause density and contribute to the three-dimensionality of the work. The obsessive and time-consuming nature of her work indicates that Brenda Miller deals with time, change, and impermanence.
Brenda Miller studied at the University of New Mexico where she was duly impressed by the Indian culture, the sand paintings, and art which can travel. “There was no need to preserve art there, the same drawing was passed through the generations … and yet, each transient drawing was so permanent.”
In the Sisal sculptures conceived in 1972/73 and generated for the purpose of this show, the origin of the work is also a grid which she diagrams and then works from this diagram or map with picture hanging wire and sisal. So the work exists in all these different stages of existence. Lucy Lippard says that "Brenda Miller’s own pieces exist, then, 'ideally' (in the drawing or diagram stage), 'potentially' (in their capability of regeneration) and actually (when assembled on the wall).” Brenda Miller chose to work with sisal of the same thickness because it’s neutral, colorless, shapeless, available everywhere, inexpensive and its linearity is subject to gravity. She cuts “lines” of different lengths which she ties and knots to the wire grid to create a specific design which grows in density the more she adds material in order to obtain physical persistence. The end result being the physical remains of an intellectual activity.
List of Exhibitions (Selection):
Solo Exhibitions
2023 - Works from the 70s, Zürcher Gallery, New York
1981 - David Bellman Gallery, Toronto, Canado
- Galerie Artline, The Hague,NL
1980 - Nesting Congruents, Sperone Westwater Fischer, New York
1979 - Sperone Westwater Fischer, New York
1978 - and/or, Seattle, Washington
- White Gallery, Portland State University, Oregon
1977 - Sperone Westwater Fischer, New York
1975 - Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
- City University Graduate Center, New York
1974 - Samangallery, Genoa, Italy
- Arte Per, Rome
Group Exhibitions
2013 - A Human Document: Selections from the Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, Curated by Rene Morales, Perez Art Museum, Miami
2007 - Small Works, Organized by Poppy Johnson at the Floyd Memorial Library, Greenport, NY
2005 - Ein Plein Art, Watercolors of the Landscape by Brenda Miller and her students Floyd Memorial Library, Greenport, NY
2004 - Talk 'til Your Blue in the Face, Dunkerly's Window, Floyd Memorial Library, Greenport, NY
- Thinking on Paper: Notes, Journals and Sketchbooks, Organized by Poppy Johnson at the Floyd Memorial Library, Greenport, NY
2002 - The A.A.A. in context, Swope Art Museum, Terre Haute, Indiana
- Invitational Salon Exhibition of Small Works, New Arts Program, Kutztown, PA
2001 - Transforming Landscape, Art Sites, Greenport, NY
2000 - Group Show - Photo Books, Art Sites, Greenport, NY
- Texture Group Show, Art Sites, Greenport, NY
1999 - Minimalist and Post-Minimalist Works on Paper, P.S. 1, NY
1997 - Bookmarks 5, Northern Illinois University Art Gallery, Chicago
- Heart Art, Rockford College Art Gallery, Rockford, IL
- Footfalls, Greenport, New York, Site-specific sculpture
1996 - The Collection of Julian Pretto, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford CT
1995 - Material Verite, Art Initiatives, New York
1994 - Measure for Measure, Gallery 128, New York
- Books by Roberta Allen, Ray Di Palma, Brenda Miller & Michelle Stuart, Printed Matter Bookstore at Dia, Curated by Jean Noel Herlin, New York
1992 - The Fetish of Knowledge, AC Project Room, New York
- Transparency, Luise Ross Gallery, New York
- Abstraction and Reality, Montgomery Center, Jersey City, New Jersey
- Holiday Invitational, A.I.R. Gallery, New York
1991 - The Fetish of Knowledge, Real Art Ways, Hartford, Connecticut
1990 - Off the Shelf, Rockford College Art Gallery, Rockford, Illinois
1989 - MICROSCULPTURE, Curated by Willoughby Sharp, Fine Arts Center, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, Rhode Island
- Dross to Art, Islip Art Museum, East Islip, New York
- Typewritten Art and Concrete Poetry, from the Ruth & Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, Miami-Dade Public Library System, Miami, Florida
- Show of Alphabet Books, Ted Cronin Gallery, New York
1988 - The Altered Page: Selections from Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, Center for Book Arts, Inc., New York
- Svetlana Kopystankaya/Brenda Miller/Collier Schorr, Cable Gallery, New York
- Works on Paper by 24 Artists, Curated by Jean-Noel Herlin, ONETWENTYEIGHT Gallery, New York
1987 - American Abstract Artists, New Work: New Members, City Gallery, Department of Cultural Affairs, New York
- American Abstract Artists 50th Anniversary Print Portfolio, The James Hose Gallery, Kean College of New Jersey
- American Abstract Artists 50th Anniversary Print Portfolio, Condeso/Lawler, New York
1986 - The Book Made Art, Joseph Regenstein Library, The University of Chicago
- Site Projects, Newhouse Gallery, Snug Harbor, Staten Island
1985 - American Art: American Women, Stamford Museum & Nature Center, Stanford, Connecticut
- Group Exhibition, Sperone Westwater Inc., New York
- Between the Covers, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston
- Art Against Apartheid, Paul Robeson Cultural Center, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
1984 - Drawings by Sculptors: Two Decades of Non-Objective Art, From the Seagram Collection, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Seagrams & Co., New York
- Five Americans and Five Colombian Artists, Gallery Garces Vylazguez
- Nantucket Landscape, Quidnet, Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, Temporary site-specific piece, NISDA Art Gallery, Nantucket Island
- Art Against Apartheid, Abbyssinian Baptist Church, New York
- Holiday Invitational, A.I.R. Gallery, New York
1983 - Notizie di Lavoro d'artista no. 57, Arnaldo Esposto, Group Exhibition, Genoa
1982 - 1981-82 New Acquisitions, Haags Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag, Group Exhibition
1981 - New Dimensions in Drawing, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut
1980 - Collapsed Grid, The Institute for Art and Urban Resources at P.S. 1, New York
- Group Exhibition, United Arts Building, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Fiber in the 80's, Sarah Campbell Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, Texas
- Summer group exhibition, Sperone Westwater Fischer, New York
- Inaugural Group Exhibition, David Bellman Gallery, Toronto, Canada
- Viaggio in New York, Galleria Arco d'Alibert, Rome
1979 - A Great Big Drawing Show, The Institute for Art and Urban Resources at P.S. 1, New York
- Patterns +, Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio
- Drawings About Drawing Today, Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
- The Minimal Tradition, The Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut
- Group exhibition, Julian Pretto and Co., New York
- Summer group exhibition, Sperone Westwater Fischer, New York
- Perceiving Time and Space Through Art, Harnett Gallery, University of Rochester, New York
1978 - Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Richard Long, Brenda Miller, Michael Singer, Hurlbutt Gallery, Greenwich Library, Greenwich, Connecticut
- Miller and Aycock, Portland Center for the Visual Arts, Oregon
- Drawings and Other works on Paper, Sperone Westwater Fischer, New York
- Group exhibtion, Sperone Westwater Fischer, New York
1977 - Studies and Other Initial Works, Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada
- Group Exhibition, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana
- Works and Projects from the Seventies, The Institute for Art and Urban Resources at P.S. 1, New York
1976 - Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, Ideas on Paper
- Inaugural Show, P.S. 1, Long Island City, New York
- Broxton Gallery, Los Angeles, California, group show
- Four Sundays, P.S. 1, Long Island City, New York
- Europe/America the different avant-gardes, Milan, Italy
1975 - William Paterson College of New Jersey, group show
1974 - Museum of the Civic Center, Philadelphia, Women's Work - American Art 1974
- The Clocktower, New York, Discussions: Works/Words
- The Women's Interart Center, New York, Wall Sculpture
1973 - Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Art
- Museum Boymmans-Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Purchase New York Cultural Center, Soft as Art
1972 - Group show, John Weber Gallery, New York
- The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Member's Penthouse, Untitled IV
- Kunsthaus, Hamburg Germany, Gedok American Women Artist Show
- John Weber Gallery, New York, group show
- Kingsboro Community College, Brooklyn, New York, group show
- The Kenan Center, Lockport, New York, Ten Artists* (*who also happen to be women)
1971 - Two group exhibitions, 112 Greene Street, New York
- 26 Contemporary Women Artist, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut
1970 - Group Exhibition, Billy Apple Gallery, New York
Grants and Awards
1987 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
1979 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
1978 Guggenheim Fellowship
1976 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
1975-1976 Creative Artists Public Service Fellowship
Collections
Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, NL
The Chase Manhattan Bank Collection, New York
The Museum Boymans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
Smith College Art Museum, Northampton, Massachusetts
The Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, Miami, Florida
Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, California
The Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin
The New Jersey State Museum, New Jersey
The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
The Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art, Bolzano, Italy