March 8 is International Women’s Day, and—as seems to be the familiar scenario every year—the long months since the last IWD have sharply reinforced the need for the occasion. It feels dizzying that Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony occurred the same year that R. Kelly was finally indicted after decades of well-known sexual abuses. Meanwhile, the President is inciting a new misinformation campaign about abortion rights. Several International Women’s Day events around the Triangle lift up women’s voices against this silencing tide.
In Chapel Hill, FRANK Gallery is hosting Women Speak, a three-day exhibit of Nancy L. Smith’s paintings of the female form, featured alongside responses to the work. A reception on March 8 runs from 6:00–9:00 p.m., and the event will close on March 10 with a 2:00 p.m. poetry reading.
More poetry is to be found in Chapel Hill at Flyleaf Books, which is hosting an International Women’s Day Poetry Reading at 6:30 p.m. in honor of the day. Featured readers include Joanna Davidson, Tsitsi Jaji, Jessica Stark, and Maria Rouphial, among others.
In Raleigh, NCMA encourages women to Take Up Space during a weekend-long lineup of IWD events of that name. Highlights include a Saturday morning talk and arts-activism workshop led by a founding member of the Guerilla Girls collective, a group legendary for decades of organizing against misogynistic art-world practices; one of its more famous posters, from 1989, reads, “Do women have to be naked to get into the MET?” Also, at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, NCMA hosts The (Museum) Future Is Female, a panel discussion with the directors—all women—of NCMA, the Ackland, and the Nasher.