Pınar Öğrenci: Glück auf in Deutschland (6 Oct 2026)

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 14:00:00 GMT

Reflect on memory, labor, and belonging in this first major U.S. exhibition by Pınar Öğrenci.

Join MA-NMWA for a curator-led tour with Lynette Roth, Daimler Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum, of Pınar Öğrenci: Glück auf in Deutschland, followed by a tour of Harvard Art Museum's recent acquisitions of works by women artists. Tour is limited to 15 participants.

Glück auf in Deutschland marks the first major exhibition in the United States by Berlin-based artist and filmmaker Pınar Öğrenci (b. 1973). The artist’s work invites viewers to question what has been remembered or erased while imagining a future grounded in justice, equality, and collective healing and shaped by layered experiences of survival, resistance, and resilience.

The exhibition includes Öğrenci’s 2024 film Glück auf in Deutschland (Good Luck in Germany), which addresses the construction of postwar German identity in the Ruhrgebiet, a heavily industrialized region known for coal mining and steel production. Five related collages are also on view, reimagining the bodies of workers and their families within the Ruhr landscape and its architecture. Öğrenci’s use of the phrase Glück auf — a common way that miners wish one another a safe return after their physically grueling and dangerous work underground — resonates with the experiences of immigrant communities in present-day Germany facing right-wing extremism.

The photographs in the film and collages were drawn largely from the Ruhr Museum archive in Essen, Germany, and include works by artists from the 1950s and ’60s. In her interventions, Öğrenci reveals how photography helped shape a homogenous, male-centered identity for both the region and the German nation; she seeks instead to present a more inclusive visual record. Öğrenci’s work is displayed alongside historical photographs from the Busch-Reisinger Museum’s collection.

Our tour will also include viewing recent acquisitions of works done by female artists, a key initiative of Curator Roth’s over the last 15 years. They include work by Rebecca Horn, Cornelia Schleime and Ngozi Schommers. Afterwards, members will be able to view the 45 minute film created by Öğrenci of the same title (in English and Turkish with English subtitles) or explore the HAM on their own.

Self-Treat lunch to follow, in Cambridge, for those who are interested.

Two Tours: Leilah Babirye & Cynthia Daignault (6 Nov 2026)

Fri, 06 Nov 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Join MA-NMWA for two special tours at the ICA, led by Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs.

Leilah Babirye: Embaga ya Naki ne Naki (Wedding of Naki and Naki): The evocative, adorned sculptures of Leilah Babirye (b. 1985 in Kampala, Uganda) feature the artist’s inventive reuse of debris with her deft carving of wood and work with ceramics. She uses the metal gears and chains of bicycles to create elaborate headdresses and jewelry, and the rubber inner tubes of bicycle tires to form long tresses that mingle with the burnt-black angles of her carved sculptures and the colorful glazes of her bulbous ceramic forms. For the ICA, Babirye premieres a new body of ceramic and wood sculptures inspired by the idea of the queer wedding. Each sculpture adopts a role—bride, groom, ring bearer, flower girl, bridesmaid, or groomsman—in a vivid installation that is both wedding ceremony and celebration.

Cynthia Daignault: Valley: Baltimore-based artist Cynthia Daignault (b. 1978 in Baltimore) conceives of her work as “long-form painting.” She creates interrelated groupings of impressionistic canvases that are infused with a cinematic sense of narrative unfolding over time.. Throughout, painting is a means to slow down the ceaseless flow of time, to meditate on what to memorialize and remember, and, to capture, according to the artist, “what it means to be alive at a specific moment in time.” For the ICA, Daignault is creating a monumental, multi-panel installation of an iconic image of the American landscape: the view looking up the Merced River through the sheer granite valley to the sky beyond at Yosemite National Park.

Massachusetts Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts upcoming events

Pınar Öğrenci: Glück auf in Deutschland (6 Oct 2026)

Two Tours: Leilah Babirye & Cynthia Daignault (6 Nov 2026)