Rutgers Student Center
Paula Birnbaum received her BA in art history from Bowdoin College and MA and PhD from Bryn Mawr College in 1996. She is Associate Professor and Director of the Art History and Arts Management program at the University of San Francisco, where she is also developing a new MA program in Museum Studies to begin in the fall of 2013. Her research focuses on the impact of gender and ethnicity on modern and contemporary women artists and their self-representation. She has recently completed two books: Women Artists in Interwar France: Framing Femininities (Ashgate, 2011), and a co-edited anthology with Anna Novakov, Essays on Women's Artistic and Cultural Contributions 1919-1939 (Edwin Mellen, 2009). Paula's essays appear in a variety of journals, including Art Journal and Woman's Art Journal, and anthologies such as Diaspora and Modern Visual Culture (Routledge), The Modern Woman Revisited (Rutgers), and Reconciling Art and Mothering (Ashgate). She is presently completing research on contemporary feminist art in Israel, as well as writing a monograph on Chana Orloff (1888-1968), a prolific Ukrainian Jewish sculptor who made her career in both France and Israel.
The Fertile Crescent: Gender, Art, and Society has been made possible through support from the National Endowment for the Arts grant number 10-4100-7033; the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the Violet Jabara Charitable Trust; the Artis Foundation and the Office of Cultural Affairs, Consulate General of Israel in New York, both of which helped fund the participation of the five Israeli artists in the exhibition, Ofri Cnaani, Ayana Friedman, Efrat Kedem, Sigalit Landau, and Ariane Littman; Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany which funded the participation of Parastou Forouhar and Ebru Özseçen; and the Harris Finch Foundation. Several programs including the inaugural symposium were made possible by a grant from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, a state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. Program partners and co-sponsoring departments including the Rutgers Centers for Global Advancement and International Affairs also contributed to the funding as did Basem and Muna Hishmeh, along with other individuals. The Rutgers University Institute for Women and Art is a unit of the Rutgers Office of the Associate Vice President for Academic and Public Partnerships in the Arts and Humanities and a member institute of the Rutgers Institute for Women's Leadership Consortium. The IWA receives General Program Support from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.
