the29.art is a collective of self-identified women working in the arts – painters, sculptors, dancers, filmmakers, writers, poets, performance artists, gallery owners, directors, critics, auction house experts, and philanthropists - who support each other’s work by sharing information, studio opportunities, gallery spaces, collaborating, creating panel discussions, finding greater representation, funding, and equity in pay and exposure.

Participation is by invitation and there are no fees.

the29.art was formerly known as TEN-ish.com. The 29 represents the number of participants as of March 13, 2023.

KATHY BREW

KATHY BREW

KATHY BREW

VIDEO MAKER and CURATOR

Kathy Brew, an independent video maker and curator, has worked on a multitude of media projects, from experimental work to independent documentaries, and public television productions.  Serving as Guest Curator for Doc Fortnight from 2017 to 2020 at the Museum of Modern Art’s annual festival of international nonfiction media, she showcased some of the most important new discoveries in documentary film/ video and experimentation within the media arts field. 

photo: John Madere

Between 1997 and 2014, Brew collaborated with her life/work partner, Roberto Guerra (originally from Lima, Peru), working on independent projects related to the arts.  Their documentary, Design Is One: The Vignellis (2014), explores the lifelong collaboration between Lella & Massimo Vignelli, arguably the world's most influential designers. The film has screened internationally at film and design festivals and continues to have screenings as it’s evergreen, and now even more important in learning about the Vignellis’ design legacy as they are no longer with us. (www.designisonefilm.com)

Excerpts from the film featuring Lella are currently included in a traveling exhibition, initiated by the Vitra Design Museum: Here We Are! Women in Design 1900-Today. https://www.design-museum.de/en/exhibitions/current-exhibitions.html Other future venues include: Kunsthal Rotterdam, Netherlands: 18.06.2022 – 29.10.2022 and Gewerbemuseum Winterthur, Switzerland: 25.11.2022 – 14.05.2023 Additionally, Design is One will be presented this summer (2022) as the centerpiece film at Magazzino Italian Art’s annual film series, Cinema in Piazza in mid-June. https://www.magazzino.art/events/upcoming

Brew and Guerra received two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Fine Arts Programming (1999 and 2000) for their work on WNET’s City Arts. Guerra passed away in January of 2014 and, in honor of his memory, she initiated the Roberto Guerra Documentary Fund with UnionDocs in the fall of 2014. https://uniondocs.org/roberto-guerra-documentary-award/

As a Fulbright Scholar based in Lima, Peru (April-July 2018), Brew developed her 20-minute film, Following the Thread, about indigenous weaving communities in the Cusco region of Peru. The film includes music composed by Pauchi Sasaki (https://www.pauchi.com/) and has screened at film festivals and is in distribution with Documentary Educational Resources. Brew also created a portfolio of photographs featuring the people from the weaving communities.


Following The Thread, Kathy Brew, 2021

BEAUTY BEHIND BARS, 2013 A short documentary about a Peruvian women’s prison where a beauty contest took place several years amidst the backdrop of the international war on drugs.

Beauty Behind Bars, 2013

Brew participated in The Art of Aging -- a two-day symposium at UCLA — co-presented by UCLA’s Art-Sci Center and Institute of Society and Genetics. She also had a concurrent exhibition,

Going Gray, which looks at the seemingly frivolous aspect of dying/not dying one’s hair to explore questions about aging and current cultural attitudes towards the graying of America. The exhibition included photographs, and mixed media along with projected video clips from a documentary in-progress of the same title.


Brew’s video work, MIXED MESSAGES (1990), examines gender stereotyping in popular culture and received numerous awards at film and video festivals and was broadcast on San Francisco’s PBS station, KQED-TV, and excerpted on the national PBS series, THE NINETIES. MIXED MESSAGES was also included in the cable series, MIXED SIGNALS, sponsored by the New England Foundation for the Arts, and screened at galleries and other venues around the country, including the American Film Institute’s National Video Festival, New York Expo of Short Film and Video, Artists Space, among many others. MIXED MESSAGES screened at the International Festival Rotterdam in 2020 and was recently selected for inclusion in The Simone de Beauvoir Audiovisual Center in Paris. It is now available on Kanopy. https://www.kanopy.com/product/mixed-messages-gender-stereotyping-popular

MIXED MESSAGES, video, Kathy Brew, 1990

Brew’s writing on media and contemporary art can be found in Women, Art, and Technology published by MIT Press, The Brooklyn Rail, Documentary Magazine, World Art, Civilization, High Performance, Shift, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, San Francisco Focus, and Artcoast.  For several years, she conducted live on-air interviews with artists for KPFA (non-commercial/Pacifica) Radio’s program Bay Area Arts.

Brew’s extensive career in the arts is discussed on Yale University’s Praxis Podcast with Brainard Carey.
https://museumofnonvisibleart.com/interviews/kathy-brew/

KATHY BREW
KATHY BREW

KATHY BREW is an award-winning independent video maker whose experience spans independent documentaries to experimental work and public television productions. Her films have been featured in international film festivals in New York, Edinburgh, London, Cannes, Montreal, and Los Angeles, as well as at major museums and organizations such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the United Nations, Harvard University, and museums in Paris, Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Rome, and Tokyo.

Brew is on the faculty in the MFA Art Practice Department  (low-residency program) at the School of Visual Arts.   She has also taught at the Graduate Department of Media Studies and Film at the New School, NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), SVA’s MFA Computer Arts department,  the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University,  and for Pratt Manhattan.   

Her writing on media and contemporary art can be found in Women, Art, and Technology published by MIT Press, The Brooklyn Rail, Documentary Magazine, World Art, Civilization, High Performance, Shift, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, San Francisco Focus, and Artcoast.  For several years, she conducted live on-air interviews with artists for KPFA (non-commercial/Pacifica) Radio’s program Bay Area Arts.

Brew has served on the Mayor's New Media Subcommittee on Digital Arts and Culture, the Steering Committee/Board of Advisors of New York New Media Association's Art and Culture Special Interest Group, a panelist for the New York State Council on the Art's Electronic Media and Film program, and on the Curatorial Committee of Eyebeam Atelier as the Exhibition Director for Beta Launch,  the first exhibition of work coming out of Eyebeam’s artist-in-residence program.  She served as a nominator and panelist for the Rockefeller Media Arts fellowships and on other panels and screening committees.

Other work of note include:

2004-2007 Co-Director of the Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival, an  international documentary festival at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. She concluded her tenure with the Mead Festival at the end of 2007 in order to return to her own documentary work and to continue as a curator/consultant in the media arts.

1997 - 2001 Director of Thundergulch, the new media arts initiative of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council that seeks to provide new forms of interaction between artists, audiences, and new technologies. 

1999 Cited as one of the "Women of Silicon Alley" in Alley Cat News, an industry publication. 

1994 Senior Associate Producer for City Arts, WNET/Channel Thirteen's weekly Emmy award-winning television program on the visual and performing arts.

1981-1984 Director of Community Affairs for KQED-TV in San Francisco and Associate Producer for arts-related documentaries, including FOUR DANCES FOR TELEVISION; BREAKING THE MOLD (about sculptors in the Bay Area).

MARTHA EDELHEIT

MARTHA EDELHEIT
ESTHER MCGOWAN

ESTHER MCGOWAN