BK 50
PATRICIA CRONIN
Conceptual artist
Jul 6, 2023
Why we’re fascinated: Because for decades she has been challenging viewers to confront their assumptions about women’s experiences. Cronin is best known for “Memorial to a Marriage” at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, a bronze mortuary sculpture created when same-sex marriage was still illegal. It depicts Cronin with her wife, embracing beneath a bedsheet, and sits atop their future burial plot. Arguably the “world’s first marriage equality monument,” it is both intimate and epic. More recent works — like “Shrine for Girls,” which commemorates three groups of young martyrs, and “Aphrodite Reimagined,” inspired by a fragmentary first-century broken torso of the goddess — provide vital commentary on how we understand the narratives around women’s histories and bodies.
— Brian Braiker