© Robert Hickerson, The Dining Room, 2012

MA Decorative Arts and Design alumnae Natalie Balthrop and Deborah Engel have teamed up to curate the upcoming exhibit, The Feminine Mystique. This exhibit is also accompanied by a symposium of the same name which is co-curated by Associate Professor Laura Auricchio.

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Reservations are required for attendance to the symposium. Please RSVP here:  http://mystiqueat50.eventbrite.com/

The Feminine Mystique

The New School announces REACT: The Feminine Mystique at 50, a two-day symposium, and a related exhibition celebrating the anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan’s groundbreaking book. Convening leading feminist scholars, writers and activists, the conference will examine the feminist movement’s past and present as well as unresolved questions about domesticity, career and family, pointing to the continuing relevance of The Feminine Mystique in 2013. The conference takes place on February 22-23 at the Theresa Lang Student Center, 55 West 13th Street, on the 2nd floor.

“With The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan transformed the national conversation about the role of women in American society,” said Claire Potter, Professor of History at The New School for Public Engagement, who co-organized the symposium with Laura Auricchio, Associate Professor of Art History, Parsons The New School for Design and Chair of Humanities, The New School for Public Engagement. “From the battles over reproductive rights, to fair pay, to women’s roles in the workforce and the family, the struggles and hopes articulated by Friedan in 1963 continue to reverberate today.”

REACT: The Feminine Mystique at 50 features a keynote address by Susan Ware, author of Game, Set, Match: Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women’s Sports and panel appearances by Feministing.com’s Samhita Mukhopadhyay, author Susan Brownmiller and others. The symposium is accompanied by an exhibition presented by the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center (SJDC) at Parsons of student works inspired by Friedan’s writing, curated by Parsons MA Decorative Arts and Design alumnae Natalie Balthrop and Deborah Engel. REACT, the exhibition, which runs from February 21 through March 5 in the SJDC’s Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries (66 Fifth Avenue) explores The Feminine Mystique from a contemporary lens in an effort to both honor the text and to provide critical analysis half a century after its publication. The exhibition features 25 works across a range of media – jewelry, fashion, photography, furniture, and video – each in response to Friedan