Some Girls
PART I
“Some Girls”
After their initial blow-up in the 60’s with 5 chart-topping billboard singles, and the 1972 release of their most popular album to date, Exile on Main St., the Rolling Stones were dismissed and written off by critics for 5 or so years… that is until the release of Some Girls (1978).
With timeless hits like “Miss You” & “Beast of Burden,” Some Girls re-cemented the Stones’ popularity amongst young folks. Humorously, despite most of their songs depicting a lust and longing for girls, the album artwork features no girls whatsoever, instead pasting the bandmembers’ faces behind several graphic wigs.
We at the Museum believe that the titular piece of this exhibition is a timeless masterpiece of rock n’ roll that, for those who haven’t heard it yet, deserves at least one full play-through. Some Girls is currently available to stream on Spotify & Apple Music.
Among the oldest, timeless, and tirelessly portrayed depictions in art, women have been painted, sculpted, and written about by artists everywhere for tens of thousands of years. While older depictions of the female form started as tokens and treasures to accompany men during long voyages, portraits of girls have evolved into signifiers of beauty, nature, power, mystique, and virtue.
The Museum Of__ is proud to present the first part of a deep dive into what is perhaps the most enduring motif in all of art history, girls. Taken from musicians and artists across different times and cultures, Some Girls sources work from both the real and online world, from the 70s all the way to the 2020s.
Through lenses of love, lust, tragedy, and reminiscence, please enjoy this carefully curated selection of some girls.
For any inquiries, please contact us here.
“The Some Girls Mixtape”
The Museum Of__’s Some Girls mixtape is a carefully crafted playlist of hand-selected songs from makers Ethan Chan & Mark Quint. Made for your listening and viewing pleasure, please click the photo above or HERE and hit play, as the Museum takes you on a head-banging and heart-throbbing journey through a curated history of songs about (and entitled) girls.
From unnamed girls hailing from notable lands (Ipanema, Los Angeles & the North Country) to girls whose names have left a longing tale of impact (Alison, Brandy & Mary Jane), and much much more, this mixtape is sure to elevate your online museum experience.
To read more about our Museum’s take on these lovely lady-themed tracks, please click here to view our added listener’s guide to this greatest hits of women.
Featured artists include:
Stan Getz, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Mink DeVille, Cyndi Lauper, Elvis Costello, Looking Glass, Aretha Franklin, the Beastie Boys, John Lennon, Tom Petty, Van Morrison, Beck, Kurt Cobaine, the Kinks, Dolly Parton, Neil Diamond, David Byrne, the Doors, the Beegees, Elton John, the Goo Goo Dolls, J.J. Cale, Simon & Garfunkel, and many more.
“The Same Girl”
Originally a cheese importer until the age of 40, Hendrik Kerstens dropped everything and fully committed to the study of contemporary photography from his home. While his wife worked to support their family, Kerstens found himself trapped in his house, simultaneously caring for their young daughter while studying art history and art-making, which sparked his most famous body of work to date, a series of photographs solely featuring his daughter, Paula that has been ongoing since 1995. Sporting common household items in strange ways to reference great Dutch master-painters of the 17th century, Kerstens’ growing collection of photographs of Paula take viewers back to an old age of art portraiture while giving us an unrestricted view of a stranger as she grows older and more aware.
From left to right, top to bottom row:
BAG, Cosy, Doily, Golden Egg Box, Napkin & Paula with Philip Treacy Hat
C-prints mounted on aluminum
2007 - 2025
Dimensions variable
“The Life of a Girl”
In an online open call in 2020, the New York artist duo, Eva & Franco Mattes offered $1,000 to anybody willing to sell them their smartphone along with all of its photos and videos intact, with the understanding that the contents would be publicly shown as part of an artwork. The winner is only known to us as Hannah, a young British woman in her thirties whose phone holds roughly a decade of her life’s content. Clocking in at almost an hour-long video slideshow of over 1200 photographs playing in chronological order, Hannah Uncut transforms the private camera roll into a public installation and visual diary of an ordinary woman, in which viewers are invited to watch a random girl go about her life with friends and family, through work and vacations, for however long they feel like witnessing this compilation of ordinary and intimate moments, all while the one song saved on the phone (only known to us as “a song found on Hannah’s phone”) plays repeatedly as the film’s soundtrack.
Hannah Uncut
52-minute single channel video
2021
Dimensions variable
“Not a Real Girl”
Now living in a world run by AI programs in our media and businesses, the Museum would like to take you back to 2019, a time where AI overwhelm was just in its infancy. Software engineer, Phillip Wang, was working at Uber and had just decided to pursue a personal project demonstrating new AI techniques. In February that same year, Phillip launched the website thispersondoesnotexist.com, a site that runs on one neural network trying to generate faces from online image databases, and another trying to distinguish real faces from generated ones. These networks train against each other until the result is an accumulation of image data that represents a singular person who isn’t real, but seems like they could be.
Thispersondoesnotexist unknowingly plays on our feeble abilities to describe and indicate what human faces should ideally and normally look like.
Untitled
Digitally randomized .jpeg image
2025
“The Girl Gaze”
The Museum Of__ is proud to present a haunted digital collection of photographs that can only be described as the stuff of depression-art legend. In the summer of ‘73, Japanese photographer, Masahisa Fukase started photographing his wife everyday as she was leaving for work from their balcony window, describing the photographs as self-indulgent self-portraits through the lens of his wife staring back at him.
The photos that now make up the From Window series became part of Fukase’s routine until his divorce, which led to a deep depression he never overcame. Fukase died drunk, falling down the staircase of his favorite bar 20 years later, transforming these playful photos into an uncanny downward spiral in the form of repetitive gesture.
From Window
Silver gelatin prints
1973 - 1974
Dimensions variable
“Family Girl”
From the renowned photobook collections by Nicholas Nixon comes a staggering collection of black and white photographs documenting a quartet of sisters as they grow old together. Religiously done like clockwork, Nixon, once at a family gathering on his wife’s side, decided to photograph his wife Bebe alongside her three sisters, and was captivated enough to take the same staged photo once a year with all four sisters in the same order (Heather, Mimi, Bebe & Laurie).
Spanning almost Nixon’s entire career, The Brown Sisters is presented in a condensed online slideshow, continuously forming a moving portrait of familial-female-bond and the passing of time.
The Brown Sisters
Silver gelatin prints
1975 - Ongoing
8 x 10 in. (each)
“California Girl”
Already an established artist in a scene taking figurative painting towards new territories, Will Cotton reached some kind of celebrity status amongst modern music listeners at the beginning of the 2010s with the release of definitive pop record, Teenage Dream by Katy Perry.
In the early aughts, pop music was a hodgepodge of loose rock roots, and fusions of electronica, auto-tune, and hip-hop cameos. Concurrently, Cotton’s style was slowly shifting to depictions of abstract, oversaturated, confectionery landscapes with pinup girls as their sole residents. Perry approached Cotton in early 2010 looking to purchase some artwork, which led to Cotton suggesting she instead pose for a painting, and the rest is half-a-dozen-hits-chart-topping history.
Cotton Candy Katy
Oil on linen
2010
72 x 84 in.
“Breaking the Girl”
Originally moving to Paris, France to become a fashion photographer, Ahn Sun Mi’s newfound isolation was inspiring enough for her to shift entirely to the art-making of introspective, digital collages. These collage works depict the artist’s own body fusing, breaking and metamorphosing, resulting in a series of allegorical images that subtlety reflect on the loneliness of someone living in a foreign land.
From left to right:
Auto Portrait 3 and Auto Portrait 1
C-prints
2012
60 x 40 in. (each)
Girl on the
Once described as something between the throws of ecstasy and pain, Patty Chang’s Eels performance portrays the artist in some kind of half-present state of mind as she seemingly erotically touches herself in various places while sitting up and staring at the camera. In actuality, the camera is pointed downward and Chang is on her back, uncomfortably trying to readjust her body as a live eel slithers around her, underneath her shirt. Eels comedically questions our ability for discernment and detail when confronted with the distractions that may come with any artistic portrait of a woman.
To watch a clip of the video, please visit the artist’s website by clicking here.
Untitled (Eels)
Single-channel video
2001
17 mins.
“The Girl’s Got Range!”
For years, Gillian Wearing has been contesting the stability and authenticity of the stereotypical self-portrait. Forming identity through roleplaying, adjusted speech, costumes, social role depictions, and camera manipulation, Wearing once recreated a series of photos from a family album embodying every single member of her family (including her younger self). The Museum presents an early-aughts trilogy of staged photographs that together recreate a family portrait with one woman incarnating all three members.
Top: Self Portrait at 17 Years Old
Bottom left: Self Portrait as my Mother Jean Gregory
Bottom right: Self Portrait as my Father Brian Wearing
Chromogenic prints
2003
45 ½ x 36 ¼ in. (each)
“Teenage Girls”
Largely inspired by frequent road trips in the American Midwest, Justine Kurland’s notable series Girl Photos stages various gaggles of young runaway girls in strange places of communal intimacy. The underneath of overpasses, public bathrooms, empty farm fields, small forests, and the edges of small towns are all sets for scenes that project the invincibility of youth, and the unspoken bond shared between all coming-of-age women in their aimless adolescence.
The Museum presents a selection of three photographs from Kurland’s series depicting bathroom stall gossip, outdoor changing & boy-torture, all pitted against the masculine myth of the great American frontier.
Top to bottom:
Bathroom
C-print
1997
Dimensions variable
Boy Torture Love
C-print
1999
Dimensions variable
Boy Torture, Hanging
C-print
2000
Dimensions variable
“Fake Plastic Girls”
Known for her particular allure towards Western kitsche, Kim Seoyeon displays an impressive ability to depict soft surfaces that replicate blurry film photography with oil and canvas. Amongst the ceramic dogs and various Christmas ornaments, Kim uses porcelain figurines of women to explore the line between states of reality and fairytale aesthetic, creating portraits of “women” in which inanimate objects can be perceived as sinister, disenchantingly somber, or strangely hyper-sexual.
Top: 눈이 부시게 (Blinking Eyes)
Oil on canvas
2026
35 ½ x 25 ½ in.
Bottom left: 가을 바람 (Autumn Wind)
Oil on linen
2025
7 x 7 in.
Bottom right: 미국과 나 (America and Me)
Oil on canvas
2025
25 ½ x 25 ½ in.
“The Shell of a Girl”
Having made work for over 30 years, Janine Antoni is no stranger to art-making around the subject of vulnerability. The Museum Of__ hasn’t found an example of this more simple and succinct than Antoni’s Saddle, a full raw cowhide mold of her body on all fours depicting the space of something alive despite the absence of both the cow and Antoni. Saddle displays a beautiful gesture of the woman’s presence in eerily and intimate form, all without the physical presence of a woman.
Saddle
Rawhide
2000
27 x 32 x 79 in.
“Fucked Girl”
There’s a story of art gossip and legend that states that the couple depicted in this aptly titled “fucked” scenario is sculptor Tony Matelli’s ex-partner alongside her new lover in a surreal, cartoonish disaster in which various weapons have wounded and pierced their semi-naked bodies as they try to outrun their violent death, all while a grand piano is mid-crashing down on top of them. We at the Museum believe that it’s folk tales like this that elevate and concern our attention towards what is otherwise a contemporary installation using a portrait of a faceless, unnamed woman as just another component. If noble, old paintings of female royalty are artworks that beautify or uplift ordinary people, Fucked Couple stands out as one that defaces just another ordinary person that only had the misfortune of being known by the artist.
Fucked Couple
Silicone, polyester, polyurethane,
wood, steel, oil, paint & hair
2005
Dimensions variable
I. South Indian Film Posters
VI. The Carpet Showroom
XI. Three Italian Steel Bicycles
XVI. I’m Google
XXI. (Prince)
XXVI. Nice Days
II. Strange Yule
VII. The Obsession of Time
XII. Dust to Dust
XVII. Caught
XXII. Trophies
XXVII. KNOT
Archive:
III. Images of the Divine
VIII. Cabinet of Curiosities
XIII. American Pie
XVIII. Times Two
XXIII. Liquid Ecstasy / Dirty Dreams
XXVIII. Drawings
XXXI. Garbage
IV. Group Identity: The Nun Project
IX. Museology
XIV. Art of Kantha
XIX. Aim at Base of Fire
XXIV. Thingamajigs, Whatchamacallits, Etc.
XXIX. Reasonably True Stories
V. Andy Warhol Album Covers
X. Gen-Z: The Conventional Rebel
XV. Nakeds
XX. EYES
XXV. Cardboard Sole
XXX. Postcard Art
Garbage
Garbage has been around for as long as people have had the confidence to call something “finished.”
The Museum Of__ is proud to present a strange gathering of “finished” images and objects repurposed from the aesthetic afterlife of stuff. Discarded, dented, excessive, mysterious, and occasionally sticky, the following works interrogate whether trash is merely matter out of place—or simply the Museum’s next acquisition.
Garbage features the work of Yuji Agematsu, Kim MacConnel, Kimiyo Mishima, Tony Tasset, Chris Thorson, Gavin Turk, Art Spiegelman, Bruno Mouron & Pascal Roustain.
Postcard Art
Mark Daley has been making postcard art since the mid-1970s using color copies of photographs paired and collaged with hand written descriptions/titles in editions of between just a few, and up to 40 cards, which are mailed out once or twice a week to a most fortunate group of art world recipients.
Many themes run through this TMO__ presentation of Daley’s work. Sometimes Daley responds to other artists or architects with series of postcards. Other works trace patterns in natural forms which may vary greatly in scale but share a circular or pentagon shape - sliced star fruit, sand dollars or a Japanese rock garden paired with large boulders on a beach.
Reasonably True Stories
The Museum Of__ presents Reasonably True Stories, an exhibition featuring the illustrative work of California-based artist Don Hughes.
Through printmaking and art books, Hughes fabricates narratives of our dystopian society by setting interpolated ideas, characters and actions in a common environment, united within an overarching theme of our species’ irrational thinking and behaviors. The stories he tells are symbolic and humorous, and mix themes of politics, religion, sex, and morality. Their pop-influenced visuals include core elements of stereotypical SoCal and Baja culture, illustrated and refracted through Hughes’ point of view as an image-maker.
Drawings
The Museum Of__ presents Drawings by Thomas DeMello.
DeMello’s colored pencil drawings are gestural marks prompted by long drives in the congested traffic of Southern California. From the marks on the pavement to the leftover paint from vehicles having hit dividers, his drawings mark the paper with swift movements and intentionally don’t stay within the bounds.
KNOT
The Museum Of__ is excited to present its third and final part of the Unreal exhibition series, dealing with hyperrealism in contemporary sculpture. This third exhibition will feature the work of Daniel Douke.
Douke is a contemporary painter and sculptor living and working out of Los Angeles, California. His work has been classified as illusionary object art. Toy boxes, food packaging, wooden crates, crushed cardboard boxes, and sheets of metal are all different objects of Douke’s interest that he recreates to painstaking detail with nothing but acrylic paint and canvas. Despite their found appearances, Douke’s work is all but simple. Each work involves precise craftsmanship and an attention to detail that accurately replicates surfaces like wood grain pattern, sunfaded metal, clean factory cardboard, and everything in between.
Nice Days
The Museum Of__ presents its second part of the Unreal exhibition series, dealing with hyperrealism in contemporary sculpture. Nice Days translate the forms of single-use plastic bags into sustainable materials: silk, beeswax and natural dyes.
Chris Thorson’s sculptures form a gap between perception and reality, making space to question the conditions of contemporary life and culture while testing the boundaries between what we overlook and what we esteem. To produce the dyes for these works, she grew plants such as madder, Hopi black-dye sunflowers, marigolds, and Japanese indigo in a community garden, ultimately presenting care and cultivation as an antidote to convenience and disposability.
Cardboard Sole
For its 25th exhibition, The Museum Of__ is proud to present Cardboard Sole, the first of a trilogy of exhibitions centered around realism in contemporary sculpture. Cardboard Sole features 8 pairs of shoes of different styles and purposes, all based on pairs owned by the artist, Frank Duchamp, which are then recreated in color, size, wear, tear, and solely out of cardboard.
Duchamp is an Oklahoma-based sculptor whose new series of work exclusively uses one of the most basic arts-and-crafts materials to create versions of everyday footwear.
Thingamajigs, Whatchama-callits & Yougotmes
There’s a tool for everything, from quirky instruments to hybrid hardware, whimsical widgets, bygone gizmos, contemporary gadgets, fittings, fidgets and everything in between… The Museum Of__ would like to share its collection of thingamajigs and whatchamacallits, a smorgasbord of unusual looking tools and strange objects, some rusty, vintage and recognizable, others shiny and new but unclear as to their purpose.
Delve into the enigmatic world of objects, where form meets function, and take a close look at the doohickeys and doodads that have silently shaped our world.