In this two-part program presented in collaboration with the University of Chicago Library’s Special Collections Research Center and the Poetry Foundation, explore the concept of motherhood through contemporary art, medical and anatomical publications, and poetry.

FREE. Participants have the option to attend one or both sessions. Space may be limited, please register in advance.

Presented by the Smart Museum of Art, the University of Chicago Library's Special Collections Research Center, and the Poetry Foundation.

PART I

Thursday, April 11, 6–8pm
Smart Museum of Art
The University of Chicago
5550 S. Greenwood Avenue

Part I features artist Lise Haller Baggesen reading from her book Mothernism and a discussion of motherhood and otherhood in Smart to the Core: Embodying the Self, as well as a tour of The Fetus in Utero: From Mystery to Social Media at the nearby Special Collections Research Center, led by exhibition co-curators Brian Callender, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, The University of Chicago; and Margaret Carlyle, Postdoctoral Researcher and Instructor, Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge, The University of Chicago.

PART II

Thursday, April 18, 6–8pm
Poetry Foundation
61 West Superior Street

For Part II, we will reconvene at the Poetry Foundation for a special Forms & Features poetry workshop and discussion of the question of motherhood as both a hindrance and boon to artistic and poetic production. The evening also features a poetry-writing exercise and readings of poems about mothers by Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and others.

Image: Spiegel, detail of De formato foetu liber singularis aeneis figuris exornatus, [1626]. alc fQM21.S672 1627 Rare. Special Collections Research Center, The University of Chicago Library.