Ellen Lesperance (American, born 1971). <em>Cardigan Worn by One Woman of the Boeing Five, Tried for Entering the Boeing Nuclear Missile Plant on September 27th, 1983, Sentenced to Fifteen Days in the King County Jail for Defending Life on Earth</em>, 2011. Wool sweater hand knit by the artist, and gouache and graphite on tea stained paper, a: 21 1/2 × 29 in. (54.6 × 73.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchase gift of Jill and Jay Bernstein, 2012.18a-e. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: , 2012.18a_PS11.jpg)

Ellen Lesperance (American, born 1971). Cardigan Worn by One Woman of the Boeing Five, Tried for Entering the Boeing Nuclear Missile Plant on September 27th, 1983, Sentenced to Fifteen Days in the King County Jail for Defending Life on Earth, 2011. Wool sweater hand knit by the artist, and gouache and graphite on tea stained paper, a: 21 1/2 × 29 in. (54.6 × 73.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchase gift of Jill and Jay Bernstein, 2012.18a-e. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: , 2012.18a_PS11.jpg)

DOWNLOAD

Download our app and ask your own questions during your visit. Here are some that others have asked.

I was wondering if you could provide some more background information in this piece. I'm not familiar with the incident in the description.

Of course! Five Puget Sound Women's Peace Camp protesters were arrested inside Kent Boeing Aerospace Center's cruise missile facility in September of 1983.

They were part of a peace group that had been camped outside the facility since June and eventually they entered, unchallenged, using homemade Boeing identification badges.

Lesperance, the artist, seeks out women involved in campaigns wearing sweaters in archival footage and then recreates their garments.

Very cool! Thank you!

Tell me more.

Ellen Lesperance creates knitting patterns based on examples of sweaters she finds in archival photographs of female activists, and then uses these pattern paintings as guides for her hand-knit “historic” sweaters.

Can you tell me more about the title of this?

Who were the Boeing 5?

The Boeing Five were a group of five women from the Puget Sound Women's Peace Camp who took their protest inside of the Kent Boeing Aerospace Center where cruise missiles were being developed.

They were protesting the creation and use of nuclear warheads, which they felt threatened life on earth as a whole. They were arrested for criminal trespassing.

Thanks.

What is the definition of an intersectional feminist?

Intersectionality refers to the interplay between different kinds of discrimination. The term was originally coined by then law student Kimberleé Crenshaw in 1989 to describe the double discrimination she faced as both a woman and a black person.

Today the term also incorporates the "intersections" of gender with age, class, socio-economic status, physical or mental ability, sexual identity, religion, etc.

The purpose of intersectional feminism is to acknowledge these compounding forms of discrimination and listen to different kinds of feminists to ensure that all women benefit from women's rights movements, which hasn't always been the case historically.

Cardigan Worn by One Woman of the Boeing Five, Tried for Entering the Boeing Nuclear Missile Plant on September 27th, 1983, Sentenced to Fifteen Days in the King County Jail for Defending Life on Earth

Ellen Lesperance

Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art

Ellen Lesperance animates archives and feminist histories by re-creating the sweaters worn by individual women at protest events during the 1980s and 1990s. This work replicates the sweater of one of the “Boeing Five,” a group of women who trespassed at a Boeing cruise-missile plant outside Seattle in 1983 and urged workers to cease the production of military weapons. The cardigan and the painted knitting pattern, which invoke the traditional category of “women’s work,” memorialize this act of civil disobedience and position feminist and antiwar causes as ones that can be readily taken up by current and future generations.

ARTIST Ellen Lesperance, American, born 1971

MEDIUM Wool sweater hand knit by the artist, and gouache and graphite on tea stained paper

DATES 2011

DIMENSIONS a: 21 1/2 × 29 in. (54.6 × 73.7 cm) frame (a): 27 × 34 1/2 in. (68.6 × 87.6 cm) c: 6 × 14 × 17 1/4 in. (15.2 × 35.6 × 43.8 cm) (show scale)

COLLECTIONS Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art

ACCESSION NUMBER 2012.18a-e

CREDIT LINE Purchase gift of Jill and Jay Bernstein

EXHIBITIONS

MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view

CAPTION Ellen Lesperance (American, born 1971). Cardigan Worn by One Woman of the Boeing Five, Tried for Entering the Boeing Nuclear Missile Plant on September 27th, 1983, Sentenced to Fifteen Days in the King County Jail for Defending Life on Earth, 2011. Wool sweater hand knit by the artist, and gouache and graphite on tea stained paper, a: 21 1/2 × 29 in. (54.6 × 73.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchase gift of Jill and Jay Bernstein, 2012.18a-e. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: , 2012.18a_PS11.jpg)

IMAGE component, 2012.18a_PS11.jpg., 2018

"CUR" at the beginning of an image file name means that the image was created by a curatorial staff member. These study images may be digital point-and-shoot photographs, when we don\'t yet have high-quality studio photography, or they may be scans of older negatives, slides, or photographic prints, providing historical documentation of the object.

RIGHTS STATEMENT © Ellen Lesperance

The Brooklyn Museum holds a non-exclusive license to reproduce images of this work of art from the rights holder named here. The Museum does not warrant that the use of this work will not infringe on the rights of third parties. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions before copying, transmitting, or making other use of protected items beyond that allowed by "fair use," as such term is understood under the United States Copyright Act. For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org. If you wish to contact the rights holder for this work, please email copyright@brooklynmuseum.org and we will assist if we can.

RECORD COMPLETENESS

Not every record you will find here is complete. More information is available for some works than for others, and some entries have been updated more recently. Records are frequently reviewed and revised, and we welcome any additional information you might have.