Portia Munson
Through her prescient drawings, paintings and signature maximalist installations, Portia Munson (b. 1961) centers the many, and often conflicting, expectations we put on the production and consumption of the female body. These ideas are showcased through her playful selection and presentation of objects including bulbous breasts, humorous crotch clenching nutcrackers, innocent dolls, sexy lingerie, and suggestive vessels. Portia Munson: The Pink Bedroom is the first presentation of Munson’s work at The Museum of Sex and features a new sculpture titled Nude II (2022) and a site-specific iteration of the Pink Project: Bedroom (1994 – ongoing) that skirts the line between empowerment and entrapment. By confronting us with the many plastic things we acquire, revere or discard, Portia Munson: The Pink Bedroom makes space for a pleasure that is complex and subjective.
Portia Munson: The Pink Bedroom, Museum of Sex, 2023, Installation View, Photo by Daniel Salemi.
Portia Munson: The Pink Bedroom, Museum of Sex, 2023, Installation View, Photo by Daniel Salemi.
Portia Munson: The Pink Bedroom, Museum of Sex, 2023, Installation View, Photo by Daniel Salemi.
Portia Munson: The Pink Bedroom, Museum of Sex, 2023, Installation View, Photo by Daniel Salemi.
Portia Munson: The Pink Bedroom, Museum of Sex, 2023, Installation View, Photo by Daniel Salemi.
Portia Munson: The Pink Bedroom, Museum of Sex, 2023, Installation View, Photo by Daniel Salemi.
Portia Munson: The Pink Bedroom, Museum of Sex, 2023, Installation View, Photo by Daniel Salemi.
Portia Munson: The Pink Bedroom, Museum of Sex, 2023, Installation View, Photo by Daniel Salemi.
Portia Munson: The Pink Bedroom, Museum of Sex, 2023, Installation View, Photo by Daniel Salemi.
Portia Munson: The Pink Bedroom, Museum of Sex, 2023, Installation View, Photo by Daniel Salemi.
Portia Munson: The Pink Bedroom, Museum of Sex, 2023, Installation View, Photo by Daniel Salemi.
My late summer visit to Portia Munson's home-studio in rural Catskill was among the most enchanting art experiences of the year.
Marissa Zappas, who has made perfumes with sex workers and astrologers, is the nose behind an exhibit’s provocative new fragrance.
Artist Portia Munson has been collecting the products for nearly 40 years
The artist’s immersive artwork explores mass consumerism and the forces of ‘empowerment and entrapment’ impregnated in constructs of femininity
From Alice Neels’ hotly anticipated London retrospective, to Portia Munson’s famed pink bedroom in New York, we select the must-see exhibitions from around the world.