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JOY Report: Updates, JourMS, WABA, Upcoming Events

No summer slacking at MoM. We are in the planning stages for some exciting upcoming events:

First, the Joy Report: All hands on deck with MoM Operations running smoothly at The Factory in St. Pete. Visitor hours are: Thursday – Saturday 12-6 & Sunday 12-3PM. We are also open for special events or private bookings. Contact us if you are interested in organizing an event at MoM. Testimony from a visitor this week: “It’s unlike any other place. It’s a must see!”

We have PRIDE at MoM: Our June exhibits featuring Interiors: We are all pink inside by Christen Clifford is viewable onsite through August. So too, is Molly Duff-Clarke’s work, Lil’ Dicki- which has been acquired by the museum and is now part of our permanent collection.

Planning Stages for what will be our 2nd MoM Art Auction in October, 2024. We are very excited about this opportunity and our incredible partner (ta-da drumroll-announcement coming shortly). Our last one was 12 years ago in NYC. Did you know MoM’s permanent collection includes photo works that are also in the Tate Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, historic papers, and works by notable mother artists from around the world. Submissions for artists to participate are now open. Link to Call for Art.

The Journal of Mother Studies is in its editorial process with an online publication date of Sept. 1, 2024, thanks to all our awesome team members. JourMS.

The MoM Conference committee is actively planning next year’s 25th Annual Academic and Arts MoM Conference. Thanks to Committee Chair Brittany DeNucci & Team for doing a super stellar job organizing initiatives. The CFP is posted online here: Fun, Sex & Crying Out Loud, March 14-16, 2025. We are working on some of our community connections to make this year’s conference even more amazing than ever. Link to CFP.

Our Move from The Factory to Gallery Row is in the planning stages. Renderings for a vision of the new space are on our website here. We are waiting on the configuration of our next iteration of MoM. Our new grand opening will be after August 30th, on September 21st, which is free museum day in St. Pete.

Intern projects are ongoing: Social Media Calendar of posts by Xy with mentorship by Mary Noah, Collections data by Whetley with mentorship by Barbara Lynch, and Sex Ed classes by Eckerd Student Ariana are all in the works over the next 7 weeks.

Artist in Residence Laura Bissell, Scottish artist, author and scholar, is interviewing mother artists, exploring pregnancy loss for her book, working on a project on motherhood with Lucy Tyler, and begining a a book chapter called Adolescence and Matrescence: Seasons of the Witch for Demeter Press. The Matrescence Festival, being held in Exeter UK is a composition of expert speakers, vibrant discussion, deep feeling poetry and songs, art making, dancing, gathering to share, discuss and support this important subject, which Laura is attending and reporting from as part of her Remote Artist in Residency with MoM.

Thanks to New Community Partner/Sponsor, BayFirst Financial. Headquartered in St. Petersburg, BayFirst Financial offers personal and business banking services, including checking & savings accounts, loans, and more. MoM thanks BayFirst Financial.

JOIN Sierra for Sierra Speaks each Tuesday LIVE at 5PM EST with playback available Wednesdays! Sierra uses custom built tools which she shares with you for love, success and well-being. Sierra Speaks empowerment through core values and acts of sharing.

Sierra Speaks is LIVE 2nd/4th Tues. JOIN HER LIVE 5PM (EST) on Tuesdays, then episodes are available by Wednesday for archival viewing. Monthly online YOUTUBE with SIERRA

YOU TUBE SIERRA SPEAKS

Amanda Bartles of Lactation Loop- Join us to socialize with other moms and families, meet local IBCLCs, & take advantage of on the spot breastfeeding education and lactation support.

August 5th at 10:30am & August 7th at 6pm with MoM. This year, the theme for National Breastfeeding Month is Nourish, Sustain, Thrive! At MoM we are pleased to host these two in-person events in collaboration with Amanda. Celebrate World Breastfeeding Week with.

Please register in advance using this LINK.

Contact INFO@MOMMUSEUM.org about Sponsor/Partnerships

Making Our Time Together Count with MoM

News & More

DID YOU KNOW WE ARE 35 + VOLUNTEER STRONG at MoM?

Thirty Five + individuals with unique skills, talents, and expertise contributing to the success of MoM from a variety of backgrounds! I don’t always get to opportunity to connect the committees, volunteer efforts and interns in one giant gratitude brag. So, I’m taking the opportunity to do that here. We are doing great things at the Museum of Motherhood, embracing museum-lovers of all ages, creating unique exhibitions, and empowering future generations through education, connection and inspiration.

As some of my community members know I have been going through some personal health challenges. I am taking the time required to go through treatments and heal. I feel incredibly fortunate to have access to the necessary care and I’m surrounded by family, friends and yes- my MoM collaborators!

Although I’m currently relegated to home– and will be for the foreseeable future- I have watched our crew come together in AWESOME WAYS. The work continues at MoM! We are all in this together and TOGETHER WE ARE STRONG. In the spirit of JUNETEENTH and PRIDE MONTH we celebrate freedom, access, and inclusivity ~MJR, Director, Founder.

HERE’S THE NEWS:

We have secured our 2024-25 lease at The Factory moving from our current location to Gallery Row in September.
We will continue to operate in our current location through Labor Day in August.
Our GRAND OPENING in the new space (Gallery Row, Florida Wildlife Corridor, Drew Marc Gallery) will be Sept 21 – free museum day in St. Pete.
We are in the planning stages for a MoM October Art Auction/ Fundraiser as part of the We Build Tampa Bay initiative to reach our goal of 100k in partnership with Odeta Xheka & OXH Gallery. The committee is for this is forming now! Want to be involved? Write us here or at INFO@MOMmuseum.org
Our MoM Conference 2025 (20th Anniversary) committee is meeting regularly. Thanks to Brittany DeNucci, Megan, Batya and Kassandra for getting the planning stages going! The title is “Fun, Sex and Crying Out Loud” mark your calendars March 14-16 2025,
Studies show that giving to women and girls organizations represent 1.8 percent of charitable giving in the USA of the 8.8 billion dollar pie. The ‘We Build Tampa Bay” fundraising initiative at MoM is ongoing. Our fundraiser yielded $4 k of the entire 100k goal for 2024-2025 with Founders Circle now including Liz Dimmitt, Deborah & Hugh Gelch, Aleks Miziolek & Betty Schaub. This is 4% of our goal – so we are doing well statistically speaking. Join us as a Founding Circle member.

General Updates: The summer Interns are busy working on projects, Sierra Clark is overseeing schedule and Community Leadership projects, Whetley and Xy our summer HS interns are woman-ing up the space this summer w/special projects, Mary Noah is mentoring Xy as is Barbara Lynch mentoring Whetley & Barbara is attending St Pete Women’s Chamber luncheons on MoM’s behalf. Board Member Deanna Barcelona attended the last Chamber of Commerce event, Connie B. preservers with data (for our 2023 Form EZ accounting soon), Larry Dillahunty gave legal counsel on our new lease. Megan Welch is editing the Journal of Mother Studies, Ariana (Eckerd College) Sex Ed (embodiment education) is in the works to create and implement future programming. Escape Womb interactive exhibit planning is underway with with Jill Wood. Laura Bissell starts remote residency for June and Executive Board Meeting in July to approve the working budget. Mary at Little House non-profit is fundraising with a recent grant submitted to Foundation for a Healthy St. Pete, more grant writing, and sponsorships of new space.

Please write us if you’d like to join our team. In the meantime, keep strong, safe and blessed. MoM Loves YOU!

Welome Ariana

Ariana P is a rising senior at Eckerd College studying Sociology and Women and Gender Studies. She is the co-president of the feminist club at Eckerd that hosts body positivity and sex positivity events as well as a book club! She teaches sex education with a focus in comprehensive and inclusive sex ed. Ariana hopes to earn her masters in social work and go into case management and continue to work with non-profits. She was introduced to MoM through a classmate that also interned with MoM the previous year. In her time with MoM she hopes to educate people about their bodies and how reproduction works! As well as have in depth conversations about womenhood!

Remote Residency

Laura Bissell: My project is to work with MoM for the period of 1month from 21st June to 21st July. During this time I will attend the Matrescence Festival in Exeter, interview mother artists exploring pregnancy loss for my book, work on a project on motherhood and academia, Term Time, with Lucy Tyler, begin a book chapter called Adolescence and Matrescence: Seasons of the Witch for Demeter Press and complete my book manuscript. I would like to undertake a MoM residency at this time to celebrate and platform the work of some of the mother/artists working in performance whose work I write about and also to connect with a wider international community of mothers.

MoM Loves You!

MoM PRIDE: Geography of a (Wo)MAN: summer plans, new exhibits, welcome interns & more…

The Joy Report – HERE IS THE LATEST TEAM NEWS!

June is PRIDE Month. This Saturday, June 1st, a new exhibit titled ‘Geography of a (Wo)man‘ onsite at MoM, incorporating images from NYC artist Christen Clifford and her body of work titled Interiors; ‘We Are All Pink Inside‘ and Molly Duff-Clarke’s “Mr. Dicki” sculpture. This will be on view along with the “Womb of Our Own; Seeing Red thru August. *Thanks to St. Pete Month of Photography on the ‘Mother Lens’ Exhibit through the month of May – we loved having you!

Christen Clifford is a feminist performance artist, mother, curator and writer whose work has been seen at The Lewyn Allyn Museum of Art, The Newark Museum of Art, The New Museum, Project for Empty Space, Eva Presenhuber, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, PS122/solonova, The Culture Project, AUNTSisDance, Postmasters Gallery, Panoply Performance Lab, Grace Exhibition Space, ArtShareLA, Vox Populii as well as London, Budapest, and Slovenia (and more). Residencies include The Museum of Motherhood, Some Serious Business, and the Ragdale Foundation. She co-chaired (with Jasmine Wahi) Rape, Representation and Radicality for The Feminist Art Project, teaches at The New School and curates Experiments and Disorders at Dixon Place. She at work on her first film. Her limited edition risograph artbook BabyLove was acquired by the Thomas J Watson Library at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her studio is Project for Empty Space in Newark. She lives in Queens and online @cd_clifford

Molly A. Duff-Clarke is a ceramic artist living and working out of St. Petersburg Florida. Using clay, Molly constructs figures that challenge the viewer’s notion of body and humor. Through the introduction of materials, such as yarn, flocking, and velvet, Molly creates soft textures that oppose the hard nature of fired clay. Molly’s studio practice is a dance between her fine-tuned craft in ceramics, and the discovery of new processes and materials. This balance between old and new, seasoned knowledge and discovery, is what keeps Molly active in her studio. Molly received her MFA from the University of South Florida in 2023, where she was the recipient of the MFA Excellence Award. She received her MA from Maharishi University and has a BFA in printmaking and ceramics from Kendall College of Art and Design. We are pleased to include her piece Lil’ Dicki in our summer exhibit: Ceramic underglaze, yarn, steel56″ x 20″ x 17″ Website

About Embodiment: The Museum of Motherhood presents exhibits that contain depictions of human anatomy. This is done for the specific reason that we are of human born and that our bodies are the vehicles and vessels for human life as well as the fact that we are an embodied species. Body parts depicted at MoM through exhibitions, display models, art, film, books, and clay may include naked breasts, bellies, wombs, embryos, penises, and other reproductive anatomy. These are not intended to be gratuitously sexual in nature but rather educational, inspirational and provocative; specifically in the manner in which art may cause us to reflect and ponder at any arts-based or science-based museum. This disclaimer is in direct response to Florida’s Obscenity Laws. The Museum of Motherhood has no intention of harming or exposing museum workers or attendees to anything other than museum-quality information and art. Everyone enters MoM in full knowledge about the nature of our purpose which is to elucidate the art, science, and herstory of women, mothers and families inclusive of all reproductive identities.

MoM at The Factory: Perhaps you’ve heard? After much back and forth, The Factory building was SOLD last week. The good news: we will stay in our current location through August and then we will move to Building 7 & 8 in Gallery Row near Drew Marc, The Florida Wildlife Corridor, and The Factory Artists in September. We will keep you posted on progress, but in the meantime, our new space will be reconfigured for new presentations of MoM – to see our original exhibits- make sure to book your tour in June, July or August of this year! New digs/ new exhibits. Don’t miss this current incarnation! Read more about the sale here: St Pete Rising ….

We Build Tampa Bay Fundraiser: Studies show that giving to women and girls organizations represent 1.8 percent of charitable giving in the USA of the 8.8 billion dollar pie. Our ‘We Build Tampa Bay” fundraising initiative is ongoing. Our fundraiser yielded $4 k of the entire 100k goal for 2024-2025 with donations by Liz Dimmitt, Deborah & Hugh Gelch, Aleks Miziolek & Betty Schaub who now comprise the first wave of our founders circle. This is 4% of our goal – so we are doing well statistically speaking. We will re-configure this page a bit and continue to actively promote.

MoM All Over: Museum founder and director, Martha Joy Rose spoke about MoM at the Tampa Bay International Ladies lunch in May and this week an invitation arrived to speak at the St Pete Women’s Club in the fall. An Eckerd College music class toured MoM and Joy shared a chapter from her edited collection Music of Motherhood from Demeter Press (2018). Joy also spoke at NERD Night about new definitions of m/otherhood and is presenting at the IAMAS Conference at Boston U June 22 & 23. Her presentation “The Last American Housewife” will be published in the forthcoming book Mother Waves by Demeter Press. Pre-order here.

TEAM

We Thank Our Volunteers: MoM runs on volunteer power. Each of the humans represented in the photo here (and more) are integral to making our operations go around on a daily basis. Our team keeps growing. Are you interested in getting involved with this legacy -defining project? Sign Up here to get involved and tell us about yourself.

Internships: In June and over the summer, we welcome two high school interns, Whetley and Xi who will be onsite managing the space and working on two projects: archiving our current exhibition and social media. We are excited to welcome them to our team!

EVENTS

XY Unboxed: a workshop, a seminar with open dialogue featuring shared experiences, and offering genuine connection, next weekend’s gathering is aimed at fostering interconnectedness. A transformative event dedicated to unraveling the complexities of masculinity and nurturing the original man. In today’s gender-evolving world, men, especially minority men, face unique challenges that require our attention and support. By addressing these challenges head-on, we can foster a more diverse and equitable society where all individuals can thrive. LINK TO REGISTER

1, 2, 3 – Let the May Countdown Begin!

May is Mothers’ Month– and here we are once more – celebrating the art, science, and herstory of American women and mothers with international collaborations. While MoM situates itself as a museum primarily focused on the last 250 years of North American women, m/others and families, our internships, conferences, and online exhibitions span the gamut from the UK to Canada, from Europe to Asia.

Here we go: LET THE MAY COUNTDOWN BEGIN!

ONE: May 1st was supposed to be the conclusion of our fundraising initiatives for fund our 2024-25 season, yet we persist. The Fundraiser continues to meet our 2024-25 Budget of $100K.

We thank the Rays and Rowdies for their recent sponsorship and we thank our new Founders Circle members: Liz Dimmitt, Aleks Miziolek, Betty Schaub and our assorted friends who have also contributed donations to this “We Build Tampa Bay” fundraiser.

In the meantime, our newest art exhibit, includes a collaborative work entitled ‘A Womb of Our Own – Seeing Red‘. This sculpture is currently onsite at MoM and will see its completion on Wednesday, May 8th with additional pieces contributed by Jessica Caldas. The sculpture assemblage includes the vision of MoM curator Martha Joy Rose and contributions by Leroy – the King of Art. Visit us Wednesday 6-7:30 PM to PLAY and CELEBRATE the fab new vision! But, first make your pledge to MoM by using this form or by donating directly to Join our Founders Circle.

We are also collaborating with The Saint Petersburg Month of Photography (SPMOP) for the exhibition MOTHER LENS: Four Visions of Motherhood: Mikaela Martin, Jena Love, Águeda Sanfiz, and Angelika Kollin, present their reflections on motherhood with very distinctive voices that range from the visual personal journal, the photojournalistic essay, conceptual photography, and fine art portraiture. [More]

TWO: MaMaPaLooZa is May 4th 10-4PM at The Factory in St. Pete in partnership with Fairgrounds St. Pete. Come to 2606 Fairfield Ave. S. Enjoy the day! FREE for the family with lots of activities, music, and discounted tix to the Fairgrounds. Full description on our page here.

THREE: 3 months is all we have at our current location at The Factory. Yes, that’s correct. May, June, July and then we begin looking for our next location. What does that mean? MoM’s going to need to make plans for where we pop up next. Have ideas? Want to help us make something happen? Get in touch. We need your input now. Join Us.

Summer Hours at MoM

Beginning immediately, our hours at The Factory May – July will be 12-6 Thursday-Sunday. If you are visiting locally or from out of town, make sure to book your tour in advance. We have a small volunteer team and sometimes may not be onsite if you have not pre-booked, however we do our best and you can always reach out! Call ahead 877-711-MOMS (6667) or write: INFO@MOMmuseum.org

Other Activities and Friends

The Mysteries About Manifestation Revealed from our friend Brett Cotter

New Program – Align Your Actions with Your Destiny

There is something almost all other manifestation programs miss; how do you break free from the subconscious beliefs that manifests all the stress and lack in our lives? Mantras and affirmations will not stick if your deeper core beliefs are not in alignment.

In this 4-Week Program you will be guided through 4 essential steps to manifest the life you want.

You will be guided to:

1. Identify your deepest desire and purpose

2. Release the old fear and programming you have around living your destiny now

3. Embody the new beliefs that automatically manifest the life you want

4. Align your time with your soul’s priorities

Facilitator: Brett Cotter, Author, Retreat Leader, and Trauma Recovery Expert with 20-years experience consciously working with the laws of manifestation. He teaches with his wife at the Omega Institute, Kripalu, Himalayan Institute, Tibet House, and Sivananda Ashram on Paradise Island.

Price: Early bird special $99 ends May 3rd, after that $199

HURRY & REGISTER NOW: https://www.stressisgone.com/page/287664

Join Us Online

Sunday, May 19 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM Online Motherhood: The Forever Job (FREE)– An evening of new writing by author and artist Suzi Banks Baum, followed by a discussion about the importance of writing motherhood with Joy Rose, award-winning artist, activist, and founder of the Museum of Motherhood. Participate in an Open Mic event for IWWG members and guests. Register Online.

Books

Matricentric feminism seeks to make motherhood the business of feminism by positioning mothers’ needs and concerns as the starting point for a theory and politic on and for the empowerment of women as mothers. Based on the conviction that mothering is a verb, it understands that becoming and being a mother is not limited to biological mothers or cisgender women but rather to anyone who does the work of mothering as a central part of their life. The Mother Wave, the first-ever book on the topic, compellingly explores how mothers need a matricentric mode of feminism organized from and for their particular identity and work as mothers, and because mothers remain disempowered despite sixty years of feminism. MoM Founder & Director, Martha Joy Rose has a chapter in this book. Order yours now.