Becca Albee


Becca Albee is an American musician and visual artist who was a founding member of the band Excuse 17 which was an early pioneer in the Riot grrrl and Third-wave feminism movements.

Early life and education

Albee is a native of Portland, Maine and the daughter of historian and author Parker Bishop Albee Jr. She attended Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington where she obtained a bachelor of arts degree, and the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree.

Music career

Albee was a founding member of the punk rock riot grrrl band Excuse 17 with Curtis J. Phillips and Carrie Brownstein. Brownstein later went on to found the band Sleater-Kinney. The band was a pioneer in the DIY and feminism movements and Olympia music scene of the early 1990s in Olympia, Washington. She met Brownstein while attending the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington where she obtained a B.A. Albee also was a member of the band Heartless Martin with Corin Tucker, who later joined Brownstein in founding Sleater-Kinney. Albee donated an archival collection related to her involvement in the riot grrrl movement and musical groups to the Fales Library and Special Collections at NYU.

Visual art career

Albee's art career has included photography, video, sculpture, and installations. Her first exhibit was initiated by friend and fellow musician Kathleen Hanna in Olympia, and she later exhibited in Seattle, Washington, Buenos Aires, Argentina and New York City. She currently is an associate professor of photography at the City University of New York. A 2011 exhibit at Cleopatra's in Brooklyn was entitled "F Is for Fake: The construction of femaleness by the US Media." It was inspired by a book by her historian father about a fake autobiography published by actress Joan Lowell in 1929 about her childhood growing up on a ship. Her work has also been exhibited in the New York City exhibition space Art in General.
From December 2019-February 2020, Albee exhibited "List Projects 20: Becca Albee" at the MIT List Visual Arts Center. According to the press release, the exhibition "engag two distinct sites of research and production—the archive and Brooklyn’s Plumb Beach to reflect on deep and mortal time scales, as well as the enduring impact of a relationship frozen in memory." It featured Albee's photography of correspondence and other material in her friend and teacher Robert Blanchon's personal and professional papers at the Fales Library and Special Collections, as well as material related to the population of hermit crabs at Plumb Beach in Brooklyn.