Tribute to Emma Bee Bernstein

Sunday, March 1, 2009 at 3:00 p.m.

This event will be a tribute to Emma Bee Bernstein and a book release for Belladonna Elders Series #4, which Emma edited and which features contributions by Johanna Drucker and Nona Willis Aronowitz, photographs and an essay by Emma Bee Bernstein, an interview with Marjorie Perloff, and artwork and an interview with Susan Bee. The book release will also mark the closing of Susan Bee’s show “The Eye of the Storm” at A.I.R. Gallery.

Emma Bee Bernstein was born in 1985 and grew up on the upper west side of Manhattan. She graduated in June 2007 from the University of Chicago with a BA with honors in Visual Arts & Art History. She wrote her senior thesis on feminism and fashion in contemporary photography, and showed her Masquerade series as part of her senior thesis show. She also exhibited her photographs at A.I.R. Gallery in NYC, the Smart Museum in Chicago, and in numerous student exhibitions at the University of Chicago. She was featured in the NY Times for her work in Vita Excolatur, a University of Chicago erotica magazine and wrote an article on feminist art for M/E/A/N/I/N/G Online #4. Emma was the star of the film Emma’s Dilemma, directed by Henry Hills, in which she interviews dozens of artists from the downtown NYC scene. She worked as a curatorial assistant in the Photography, Contemporary Art, and Prints & Drawings departments at the Art Institute of Chicago, at the Renaissance Society, and was a docent at the Smart Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum. She worked as a Teaching Artist at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and was an involved mentor and teacher for Step Up Women’s Network. With Nona Willis Aronowitz, Emma conceived the GIRLdrive project: a cross-country trip to interview and photograph a multitude of diverse women, reflecting on the present state of feminism and social activism. Girldrive has a blog and is a forthcoming book from Seal Press. Emma died in December 2008 at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy, where she had an internship. Emma is survived by her parents Susan Bee and Charles Bernstein and her brother Felix.