Sheila Pepe: Softly…Before the Supreme Court

The M has commissioned New York-based artist Sheila Pepe to create a site-responsive installation for the museum’s Sculpture Court. This work will be premiered on the occasion of the opening of the new museum in the Pioneer Endicott buildings in December 2018. 

Pepe is an artist and educator known for large-scale, ephemeral works made from domestic and industrial materials through a process she calls “improvisational crochet.” Since the mid-1990s, Pepe has used lesbian feminist and craft traditions to investigate systems of power in institutions of art and education. Softly…Before the Supreme Court is a reference to architect Cass Gilbert, who designed the Endicott building which houses the new M, the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington D.C., and other nationally significant sites. 

Pepe’s looping, drooping lines and crocheted shapes are a response to the gravity and hard geometries of the room – a soft, gestural rejoinder to two landmark buildings by one of America’s most famous architects

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website