Egg Collective’s "Designing Women III: Mother" Now Open

Pelle Vignelli Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 10

Egg Collective Gees Bend Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 05

Egg Collective opened the first “Designing Women” group exhibition in 2017, intended to call attention to the inequities for women inside the male-dominated design industry. Curated by the three co-founders of Egg Collective – Stephanie Beamer, Crystal Ellis, and Hillary Petrie – the exhibition highlighted women at all stages in their careers working in a variety of materials, scales, and disciplines.

One year later, the collective presented “Designing Women II: Masters, Mavericks, Mavens”, featuring an international roster of work from both contemporary and historical female voices. Co-curated with Lora Appleton, the selected works were intended to foster a conversation about how women have achieved success, blazed trails, and furthered their craft over time.

“Designing Women III: Mother” is conceptually inspired by a Harvard study that found a large portion of the pay gap that exists between men and women can be explained by the “motherhood penalty” – the belief that mothers are less committed to their jobs than their male counterparts, even if the men are also fathers, and therefore are not paid equally. Fathers in fact receive a pay increase with the birth of each child as they are viewed as breadwinners.

Aulenti Atterbury Konekt Ritter Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 02

Atterbury Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 03

Derespinis Pergay Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 04

Egg Collective Gees Bend Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 05

Ringold Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 06

Zeisel Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 07

Atterbury Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 08

Atterbury Detail Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 09

Pelle Vignelli Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 10

Pelle Detail Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 11

Pergay Whitaker Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 12

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Bourgeois Vautrin Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 14

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Atterbury Calico Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 18

Behun De Leon Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 19

Egg Collective Calico Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 20

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Fallahzadeh Calico Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 22

Paiva Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 23

Vonnegut Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 24

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Muller Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 26

Perriand Gees Bend Egg Collective Mother Yellowtrace 29

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A follow-up study looked at how society could best address this inequity and found that the most beneficial way to change the unconscious bias is to challenge the cultural norms that maintain those beliefs through both policy changes in the workplace and exposure to facts/experiences that show the norm to be false.v

The Mother show intends to challenge this norm by highlighting the work of female artists/designers that are also mothers, and through their work are making notable contributions to the art and design landscape.

Historical and contemporary works of both fine art and design are presented, co-curated with Tealia Ellis Ritter. On show now at Egg Collective’s TriBeCa Showroom until May 29th, and online through to August at eggcollective-designingwomen.com.