The Real Women Project
In honor of International Women’s Month UMKC School of Nursing & Health Studies and The Women’s Center are highlighting the Real Women’s Project. Thirteen bronze statues created in the likeness of real women. Please join us in celebrating women internationally and visit the interactive website which includes songs and stories about each woman.
Visit here: https://www.thinglink.com/scene/1581000034294431747
“Real Women” is a series of thirteen small bronze sculptures by T. J. Dixon. The series seeks both to unveil and to celebrate the diverse beauty of real women. This is a beauty to which we are often blinded by our harsh automatic judgments of our bodies based on how much they deviate from a ridged cultural ideal.
The dream behind the “Real Women” series is to use the power of art to challenge our conscious and unconscious adherence to the cultural ideal and to open our eyes to our individual beauty as women. This is not a new idea, and this is not a new attempt, but the powerful and damaging images that we continually internalize require constant and powerful challenges to help women reclaim their self-confidence.
Artist T.J. Dixon and James Nelson (Began collaborating in 1991)
Article: T.J. Dixon (posthumous) and James Nelson
https://www.calstate.edu/impact-of-the-csu/alumni/Honorary-Degrees/Pages/TJ-Dixon.aspx
HISTORY OF THE PROJECT
(Described by Rebecca Briggs Becker, UMKC University Archivist)
Acquisition Information: The UMKC Women’s Center transferred the Revisioning Women’s Project to the School of Nursing and Health Studies in 2010. The UMKC Women’s Center gained custody of the Revisioning Women Project, with its grant and donated funding, from the Central Exchange Education Center in 2004.
Brief Historical Overview of Collection: From the ReVisioning Women Project training manual for presenters and facilitators: “The ReVisioning Women Project in Kansas City provides experiential presentations, workshops, and ongoing programming to empower women and girls to make healthy and life-affirming choices. Utilizing original sculpture, poetry, music, video, and storytelling and experiential material, The ReVisioning Women Project in Kansas City promotes self-acceptance and self-love as the foundations for health of body, mind, and spirit.”
Dr. Donna Brooks, Cathy Conheim, and Dr. Barbara Levy founded the Real Women Project in 1998 when they commissioned 13 bronze statuettes of women at varying ages and body types from sculptor T. J. Dixon. They also commissioned works from poet River Malcolm, musician Deborah Liv Johnson, videographer Jan Phillips, musician Robin Adler, and storyteller Alyce Smith Cooper. Jarene Stanford, past president of the Women’s Foundation of Greater Kansas City, was inspired by the project’s tour that she commissioned a set of sculptures to supplement workshops and a curriculum that became the ReVisioning Women Project in Kansas City in the early 2000s. The project was then transferred to the Central Exchange Education Center in 2003.