Taught by AnnMarie Perl, ART 490/GSS 490/VIS 490 “The Feminist Critique, Fifty Years Later” examines feminist critiques of art history and contemporary art drawing on artworks by Rosa Bonheur, Georgia O’Keeffe, Adrian Piper, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol and others from the Princeton University Art Museum, as well as readings in art history, art criticism, cultural criticism, literature, and philosophy.
Among the most impactful components of the class in the 2023 fall semester was a visit from artist and trans woman Zackary Drucker.
“I have loved the class so far,” said Noah Klemmer Domonkos ’26. “Although it would be almost impossible to condense the whole study of feminist art into one semester, the class has provided a very thorough overview, and the readings have opened my eyes to so many great artists and movements that I will continue learning and reading about in my own time.”
According to sociology major Valerie Neske ’25, “ART490 has by far been my favorite course this semester and one of my favorite courses I’ve ever taken at Princeton. Dr. Perl is an amazing instructor and she is wonderful at facilitating discussions. She ensures that the materials and concepts are accessible and interesting to all students. Whereas many classes focus on teaching from a textbook, ART490 allows you to think independently and raise questions you’ve never considered before.”
“One thing I love about ART490 is all of the amazing opportunities that you don’t get in a typical classroom setting,” Neske continued. “For example, we go on frequent field trips to see the artworks we study in person.”
Along with the opportunity to study works close-up, students were also able to engage with people who have played pivotal roles in the feminist movement.
Midway through the semester, Maura Reilly, director of the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, spoke with the class about the power of curatorial activism.
“We read her book on curatorial activism as well as the catalog for her infamous Global feminisms exhibition, so for her to come and speak to us was really special,” said Domonkos. “Her talk elucidated the widespread sexism and racism that is still so apparent in the art world through her painstaking infographics made by personally going to museums and counting every work and then counting how many are by female or BIPOC artists.”
Learning from Zackary Drucker
Among highlights for Neske and Domonkos, as well as Perl, was the guest lecture by artist, filmmaker, and trans woman Zackary Drucker.
“During the last decade or so, the ways that people have been thinking about transness and gender more generally have changed a great deal and very rapidly. Studying Zackary’s photography and film, with the artist herself, helped us to understand the very special role that art can play in changing people’s ideas, even firmly entrenched ones.“ — AnnMarie Perl
“Zackary Drucker prompted a radical shift in my understanding of trans-feminist and feminist art as a whole,” said Domonkos. “Through her candor and impressive breadth of knowledge, she encouraged me to introspect on what I believed about gender, sexuality, and seeing.”
Neske agrees, “It was truly incredible to get to speak face-to-face with such a brilliant artist and filmmaker. She was so friendly and excited to talk with us, and I feel like she taught us so much in the short time she was here. Something she said that stuck with me was that ‘There is universality in specificity,’ and having watched her documentary The Stroll and finding myself relating deeply to the women shown, this sentiment resonated with me.”
Perl was moved by Drucker’s use of photography in her youth as a way to express her identity in a way that reality did not allow at the time. “Throughout our seminar on the feminist critique, we’ve been studying how individual artists—male and female—challenged social norms and feminist notions via their artwork. Zackary’s transfeminism is fundamentally new and different from the feminist critiques we’ve studied roughly chronologically in the course so far, spanning the nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries. Her early portrait photography emphasizes that gender is not a fixed binary system, but a spectrum of dynamic possibilities, which in turn implies different kinds of social and sexual relations than we have at present.”
The visit impacted Zackary too. “I was so honored to have an opportunity to connect with so many brilliant people at Princeton,” she said. “It was an engaging and illuminating afternoon that I will never forget.”
“I was so honored to have an opportunity to connect with so many brilliant people at Princeton. It was an engaging and illuminating afternoon that I will never forget.”
— Zackary Drucker
To prepare for Zackary’s visit, the class studied her early photography, read texts on her work, and watched two recent documentary films that premiered in 2023 on HBO and Hulu. “Zackary gave us the artist’s insider views of the origins and developments of these films, which are now accessible to millions of people worldwide,” said Perl. “The class was impressed by Zackary’s creativity, productivity, and commitment to spreading more fluid and inclusive ideas about gender, sexuality, and feminism in our country and across the world.”
Read Noah Klemmer Domonkos’ full article on Zackary Drucker’s impact on him.