Exhibition

Jessica Campbell: Heterodoxy

October 6, 2023–March 24, 2024

A tufted green rug consisting of curved lines and floral shapes with of yellow, peach, pink, and a darker green.
Jessica Campbell, in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. “Heterodoxy” (Process Image), 2023. Photo credit: Carlos Avendaño.

The first rule of Heterodoxy is you do not talk about Heterodoxy. 

Jessica Campbell’s exhibition, lecture and discussion series explores the complex personal, political and professional relationships facilitated by the twentieth century secret feminist debate club named Heterodoxy. Produced in collaboration with the FWM Studio, this presentation takes the form of a gathering space—an interpretation of Polly’s Restaurant in Greenwich Village, NY, an early meeting place of the group—with artworks relating to the club and its members, outfitted in an immersive tufted rug environment. 

Operating between 1912–1940 in Greenwich Village, Heterodoxy gave its members a safe forum to confront issues relevant to their time and advocate for change with other passionate, thoughtful women. The club brought together members from diverse professional fields, political alignments and personal backgrounds to debate issues that remain remarkably relevant today such as voting access, the right to an abortion and access to birth control, sex education, universal child care, public health, and prison reform. No records were kept to allow members complete freedom to speak their minds.

As a visual artist and cartoonist, Campbell is interested in the ways in which combinations of seemingly disparate media, subject matter, and tone can act as tools for research and the production of knowledge. Her satirical textiles, drawings, and comics expose everyday experiences that reveal both current and historical misogyny. Campbell is particularly interested in how Heterodoxy’s strategy of interdisciplinary dialogue and the dissolve between the personal and professional could be implemented today as a way of generating creative solutions to vital social issues. 

Jessica Campbell: Heterodoxy invites the public to engage with these issues through an exhibition and lecture series—holding space for the kinds of radical conversations that were Heterodoxy’s raison d’être. 

Location

The Fabric Workshop and Museum
1214 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107

First Floor Gallery

Plan Your Visit

This exhibition is included with free general admission

Free Tickets

Who were the Heterodites?

Birth Control Review, May 1919. Cartoon by Lou Rogers.

Established by Marie Jenney Howe in 1912, the club brought together members with only one criteria: that she “not be orthodox in her opinion.” Counted among dozens of “Heterodites,” as its members called themselves, was the physician Sara Josephine Baker, the first woman to receive a doctorate in public health, whose successful campaigns for preventative treatment among impoverished immigrant communities in New York significantly reduced infant mortality and blindness; suffragists Alice Kimball, Alison Turnbull Hopkins, Doris Stevens, and Paula Jakobi—all members of the Silent Sentinels who were famously arrested in 1917 while picketing at the White House for the right to vote; the cartoonist Lou Rogers, whose satirical works between 1912 and 1922 advanced the causes of women’s suffrage and access to birth control; and Beatrice M. Hinkle, whose practice in psychoanalysis promoted the self-actualization of women.

 

Book A Private Meeting in Heterodoxy

Jessica Campbell: Heterodoxy invites the public to engage with important issues of our time by holding space for the kinds of radical conversations that were Heterodoxy’s raison d’être.

The exhibition is available for private meetings on a first come, first served basis, Tuesday 10:00 am–6:00 pm and Wednesday–Friday, 10:00 am–12:00 pm, contingent upon space and staff availability. To schedule your group, please read through our booking policy and complete our form.

Private Meeting Form

Artists in This Exhibition

Downloadable Media and Related Links

Download the Press ReleaseDownload the Press Release

About the Artist

Canadian, based in Toronto, Ontario

Jessica Campbell is a multidisciplinary artist and author working in comics, fibers, painting, drawing, and performance. Drawing on a wide range of influences, including science fiction, art world politics, and her evangelical upbringing, Campbell explores ways to reflect heterogeneity through a combination of disparate media, subjects, and tone. Whether through cartoony depictions or the use of unorthodox material, her work often wields humor as a device to help one come to terms with its darker subject matter.

Campbell is the author of three graphic novels, including the forthcoming RAVE (Drawn and Quarterly, 2022), Hot or Not: 20th Century Male Artists (Koyama Press, 2016) and XTC69 (Koyama Press, 2018). Her comics have appeared in The New Yorker, Hyperallergic and the Nib, among other publications. Her Chicago Works show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2018–2019) was reviewed in Art in America, Hyperallergic, and Juxtapoz. Other solo and two-person exhibitions include Field Projects, New York (2019); Roots & Culture, Chicago (2015), and La Galerie Laroche/Joncas, Montreal (2012–2013). Her work has been included in group shows at the John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI (2022); The Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton (2022); Richard Heller, Los Angeles (2019); the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario (2019); the ICA, Baltimore (2018); Monique Meloche, Chicago (2017); and was included in Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2021). She is represented by Western Exhibitions, Chicago, IL.

About the Curator

Heterodoxy is organized by Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs DJ Hellerman, and Project Technician Allen West in collaboration with the artist and the FWM Studio team. The project was initiated by the originating curator Karen Patterson, FWM’s former Director of Exhibitions.

Support

Major support for Jessica Campbell: Heterodoxy has been generously provided by The Coby Foundation, Ltd. This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

In-kind support has been provided by Tuft the World.

Major support of FWM is provided by the Marion Boulton “Kippy” Stroud Foundation. FWM receives state art funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Additional support is provided by Agnes Gund and the Board of Directors and Members of The Fabric Workshop and Museum.