A viral encounter with a bronze sculpture put our host, Madison Beale, in touch with the incomparable interdisciplinary artist Patricia Cronin this year. Today on the Artalogue, Beale sits down down with Cronin to discuss her career trajectory from humble beginnings to a global art world presence as multidisciplinary feminist artist behind Memorial to a Marriage and Shrine for Girls to unpack how a work of art can carry both intimacy and insurgency. Patricia traces her path from a Catholic childhood through the 1990s culture wars, with erotic Polaroids interrogating power, authorship and voyeurism. That same insistence on lived perspective inspired later works, like the three-ton neoclassical embrace installed on her own burial plot to answer legal and physical absence in public space, and three quiet altars in Venice layered with fabrics that invite viewers to better understand how the patriarchy harms us all. Beale and Cronin also face the present head-on: executive orders scaring museum programs into deplatforming artists, show cancellations rippling through the arts in the United States, and the subtler danger of self-censorship in the studio. Cronin shares a clear path for resisting authoritarianism, matching skills to message and building communities that outlast regimes. Patricia Cronin is an interdisciplinary feminist artist that examines issues of gender, sexuality, and social justice. Major bodies of work focus on the international human rights of LGBTQ+ persons, women, and girls, including “Memorial To A Marriage”, the world’s first Marriage Equality monument. Cronin’s work has been exhibited internationally, with solo exhibitions at institutions including the Tampa Museum of Art, The FLAG Art Foundation, the 56th Venice Biennale, the Brooklyn Museum, and the American Academy in Rome. She has also participated in significant group exhibitions around the world and received various prestigious awards and fellowships. Cronin’s works is collected by numerous museums, including Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, National Gallery of Art, Perez Art Museum Miami, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Tampa Museum of Art, and Woodlawn Cemetery. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. If this conversation moves you, follow the show, share it with a friend who loves art and justice, and leave a review with the artwork that changed your life. Your stories help others find us and keep this community growing. Connect with the Artalogue: Madison Beale, Host Be a guest on The Artalogue Podcast
