Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery
Hunter West Building
132 East 68th Street (between Lexington and Park)
New York, NY 10065
Presented in conjunction with Speaking in Pairs. Free and open to the public.
In Anna Lise Jensen’s text portrait, Faceless Portrait/One Leg Out, a Narrator discusses Mad Housers: “These little huts are better than people sleeping on Lower Wacker Drive, where a lot of people sleep. Or any place. You can sleep in the strangest places.”
Housing activist Tracy Woodard of Mad Housers, an Atlanta based non-profit organization, will speak with artist Anna Lise about housing, hut architecture, and client death prevention during blizzards. The show’s theme of “speaking in pairs” manifests itself, in this case, in an artist and a housing activist meeting for a public conversation through a text work.
Tracy Woodard
Anna Lise Jensen
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Anna Lise Jensen
Anna Lise Jensen is an interdisciplinary artist whose work One Leg Out is included in the group exhibition Speaking in Pairs, curated by Reiner Leist. Her practice centers on serial artworks that she integrates into installations functioning as intimate settings for social gatherings and interviews, inviting both friends and strangers to strengthen existing bonds while facilitating new connections.
She holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Hunter College, and an MA in International Relations from the University of Chicago, and received the Hunter College Foundation Scholarship for exchange studies at the Slade School of Fine Art, London.
Her work has been exhibited at Edward Hopper House, New York Center for Book Arts, A.I.R. Gallery, Flux Factory, Bronx Arts Space, and the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery, among others. She has presented her work at conferences including the National Women’s Studies Association and Open Engagement, and discussed it on NPR’s The Brian Lehrer Show.
Tracy Woodard
Tracy Woodard has been working with the unhoused population since 1999, when she volunteered at the Atlanta Harm Reduction Center's needle exchange. Around the same time, she began volunteering with Mad Housers, moving into client resources and eventually taking on the role of president. She is currently with Intown Cares as a program manager, where she trains case managers as part of a broader partnership with Atlanta city councilmembers, churches, clinics, and similar institutions that focus on housing navigation, street outreach, and street medicine. Woodard holds degrees from Georgia State University and the University of Georgia.
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Speaking in Pairs is curated by Reiner Leist, Professor of Art & Art History at Hunter College, with MA and MFA students enrolled in the Advanced Curatorial Certificate Seminar. The exhibition is organized by Katie Hood Morgan, Chief Curator and Deputy Director, and Tara Ohanian, Assistant Curator and Exhibitions Manager. Exhibition design: Louisa Thompson and Reiner Leist in collaboration with curatorial fellows Caitlin Anklam, Adrienne Keller, and Sofia Rivera. MA and MFA students: Noa Raviv, Kendall Rogers, Vivek Sebastian, and Ingrid Song.
The exhibition is made possible by The Leonard A. Lauder Exhibition and Catalogue Fund, the Boris Lurie Art Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Crossway Foundation. A catalogue, co-published with Hirmer Publishers and forthcoming in Fall 2026, is funded by a grant from the Wolf Kahn Foundation and the Emily Mason and Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation on behalf of artists Emily Mason and Wolf Kahn.
ABOUT THE HUNTER COLLEGE ART GALLERIES
Part of the college’s Department of Art and Art History, the Hunter College Art Galleries have contributed to New York City’s vital cultural landscape since their inception over a quarter of a century ago. The galleries provide a space for critical engagement with art and pedagogy, bringing together historical scholarship, contemporary artistic practice, and experimental methodology. Located on Hunter’s main campus at 68th Street and Lexington Avenue, the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery presents research-driven historical exhibitions that provide new scholarship on important and often under-represented artists and art movements.
For more information about exhibitions and public programs visit: huntercollegeartgalleries.org
PRESS INQUIRIES
E-mail Aleeq Kroshian, aleeq.kroshian@hunter.cuny.edu
