THE LAKEVILLE JOURNAL: At Mad Rose Gallery, two exhibits invite a new way of seeing

Natalia Zukerman
Dec 10, 2025

Mad Rose Gallery in Millerton recently invited visitors to experience both of its current exhibits, “Ebb & Flow” and “The Female Gaze” with many of the artists in attendance.

The tour began with “Ebb & Flow,” an installation of glass works by Steven Weinberg, Lisa Sacco, Eric Hilton and Natalie Tyler. In the late-afternoon sun, the room became a kaleidoscope of bending, fracturing, flickering light. Color slid across the walls; reflections dissolved into shadow. It was a subtly instructive prelude to “The Female Gaze” next door as the glass didn’t just glow — it shifted the angle of attention, teaching the eye to notice differently.

The term “the female gaze” is attributed to feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, who, in her 1975 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” named what Hollywood had long taken for granted: the camera — and by extension, the viewer — was aligned with a masculine subjectivity. Women existed on-screen largely as objects, not agents.

In the decades since, the “female gaze” has evolved into something more expansive. It signals authorship, yes, but also empathy, subjectivity, and the refusal to flatten lived experience into familiar tropes. It is not simply the opposite of the male gaze; it is another way of seeing altogether.

Mad Rose’s eight featured photographers explore this premise across mediums, histories and sensibilities using diverse approaches to challenge conventional narratives. The response has been so positive that the exhibit has been extended through Dec. 28. Read more.