This spring, The Judith Center partners with CalArts to host French conceptual artist Carole Douillard for a one-month residency. The collaboration is based in the CalArts Reef Residency space, located adjacent to The Judith Center, a public-facing gallery where visitors can observe the artist’s work in progress. With a practice rooted in the reinterpretation of historic performances and the reactivation of feminist archives, she will be researching the history of performance art by women and queer artists in Southern California from the 1960s through the 1980s. Members of the public who are interested in visiting the space or connecting with the artist are invited to contact us at info@thejudithcenter.org.

Building upon our last book club's discussion—delving into Shulamith Firestone's embrace of technology and its potential to liberate women from oppressive roles tied to biological reproduction in her book The Dialectic of Sex (1970)—for this meeting, we expand our exploration of how gender informs critical responses to technological development with Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Private I: A Memoir (2025).

While Firestone proposed how technology could be used as a tool to facilitate gender equity, Hershman Leeson underscores its corrosive applications in systems of repression, surveillance, and censorship. In her trailblazing practice, she imaginatively disarms technology by using it as a creative medium to platform progressive ideas—fabricating distorted, surreal, and alternate realities that probe technology’s encroaching influence over identity and society.

To enrich the conversation, attendees are encouraged to read "In Conversation: Lynn Hershman Leeson with Michelle Handelman" (Brooklyn Rail, November 2025). Tom Teicholz—Editor of Private I: A Memoir, award-winning journalist, and author of the Substack The Enthusiast by Tom Teicholz—will join for the conversation. As always, refreshments and snacks will be provided. Find more information on the event, where to find the book, and how to RSVP here.

In 2024, The Judith Center launched its first major initiative, The Judith Center Poster Project, occurring over five years in partnership with numerous university art museums across the U.S. The project features new works made by 50 American artists, reflecting contemporary concerns about equality, and is accompanied by educational programs.

The first phase of the project, Freedom in the Automation Age, is on view at The Judith Center (following its debut at MSU Broad Art Museum) through May 9, 2026. The series consists of newly commissioned posters by Lynn Hershman Leeson, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Warren Neidich, abbi page, Martine Syms, and Linda Vallejo. The artists’ works speak to intersections of gender and how the commercialization/weaponization of new technology (such as AI) is resulting in an increasingly restricted space for individual freedoms, both in democratic processes and beyond.

On June 13, The Judith Center partners with the nonprofit organization Just Detention International (JDI) to present an exhibition featuring nearly one hundred works by individuals who have experienced trauma behind bars, including those who have been subjected to sexual abuse while incarcerated. The exhibition foregrounds personal testimony and creative expression, bringing visibility to voices that are too often excluded from public and cultural discourse. Founded in 1980, Just Detention International is a health and human rights organization dedicated to ending sexual abuse in all forms of detention. JDI is the only organization in the United States—and globally—focused exclusively on addressing sexual abuse behind bars. Its work includes holding government officials accountable for prisoner rape, challenging the cultural and institutional conditions that allow sexual violence to persist, and ensuring that survivors have access to the support and resources they need.

On May 31, 2026, The Judith Center will present the keynote panel for the Now Be Here Anniversary & Now Let’s Talk Events, hosted by Occidental College/OXY ARTS. Serving as the kickoff event of the daylong program, the panel will bring together a dynamic group of speakers with experience in journalism, arts activism, museum leadership, cultural theory, and curatorial practice, and will be moderated by artist Kathryn Andrews. Panelists will consider effective instances of resisting sexism across different sectors of the art world over the last several decades, while also addressing the work that remains to be done to create more equitable and inclusive conditions within the field.