Elayne Clift writes about women, art, politics and social issues from Saxtons River. www.elayne-clift.com
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, dedicates a floor to women’s art. An entire wing of the Brooklyn Museum exhibits feminist art only. At the Baltimore Museum of Art, a yearlong program of exhibitions, programs and acquisitions by female-identified artists is mounted. New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) showcases printmaker and found artist Betye Saar’s 1969 autobiographical work, “Black Girl’s Window.”
These are just a few museums in the U.S. committed to correcting past omissions in terms of acquiring, exhibiting and honoring women artists. Each was opened last year, and each fell victim to anticipated large-scale viewing because of shutdowns in the face of Covid-19.
They were joined by other excited institutions, galleries and university-based arts venues across the country who worked collaboratively with the Feminist Art Coalition, a grassroots organization, to present a series of concurrent events including exhibitions, performances and lectures to ensure that women are recognized at the museum level.
Internationally, museums, including Madrid’s Museo del Prado, were also slated to be recognized as they commemorated women’s achievement in art. The historical inequality pervasive in the male-dominated art world was obvious for years at the Prado, but for its 200th anniversary, the museum featured two overlooked 16th-century female painters. Elsewhere in Europe, last year saw major exhibits of women’s art.
All that activity reflected progress, but there are still issues to be addressed when it comes to women in the arts. Just two years ago, 96% of artwork sold at auction was by male artists, and only 30% of artists represented by commercial galleries in the U.S. were women. A survey of permanent collections in 18 major art museums in America conducted at the same time found that out of over 10,000 artists, 87% were male and 85% were white. Only 27 women out of 318 artists are represented in the 9th edition of Janson’s “Basic History of Western Art,” up from zero in the 1980s.
Against that backdrop, the work of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) in recognizing women’s overlooked place in art and its public mea culpa was significant. Its extensive third-floor exhibition of women’s art, “Women Take the Floor,” offered a stellar showcase of women’s art that sought to “acknowledge and remedy the systemic gender discrimination found in museums, galleries, the academy and the marketplace, including the MFA’s inconsistent history in supporting women’s art.”
The various exhibit spaces included paintings, sculpture, prints, photography, jewelry, textiles, ceramics and furniture, all created by women artists, some recognized and others whose work has been obscured. Exhibits themes ranged from Women Depicting Women, Women on the Move: Art and Design, Beyond the Loom: Fiber as Sculpture, Women Publish Women: The Print Boom, and Women of Action.
“Our goal was to celebrate the strength and diversity of work by women artists while also shining a light on the ongoing struggle that many continue to face today. This is a first step,” said Nonie Gadsden, a senior curator who led a cross-departmental team of curators in organizing “Women Take the Floor.”
Also noteworthy was the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) exhibitions, programs and acquisitions by female-identifying artists that took place throughout 2020 in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in America. “2020 Vision” encompassed 16 solo exhibitions and seven thematic shows. The “2020 Vision” project was part of the museum’s ongoing commitment to addressing race and gender diversity gaps within the museum field and representing fully and deeply the spectrum of individuals who have shaped the trajectory of art.
The recognition of women artists didn’t take place in a vacuum. Advocates, activists and feminist art critics worked for decades to make it happen. None is more respected than the late Linda Nochlin, whose pioneering essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Female Artists?” published in 1971, was groundbreaking.
Then there are the Guerilla Girls, a group of feminist activist artists who wear gorilla masks and remain anonymous as they work internationally mounting street projects, postering and stickering wherever they find discrimination, gender and ethnic bias and corruption. Last year, with help from Art in Ad Places, they placed a poster on a phone booth in front of MoMA in New York City calling out the museum for its ties to sex offender, the late Jeffrey Epstein, and other big donors. They’ve also reframed Linda Nochlin’s critical question. “Why haven’t more women been considered great artists throughout Western history?”
Susan Fisher Sterling, director of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, DC, founded more than 30 years ago, may have the answer: “Museums, in general, mirror the power structures in our society, structures that in the arts privilege the history of white men’s accomplishments.” NMWA is the only major museum in the world solely dedicated to celebrating the achievements of women in the visual, performing and literary arts. The museum honors women artists of the past, promotes women artists in the present and assures the place of women artists in the future.
Let’s hope that these important exhibitions can be viewed and appreciated post-pandemic. Surely, women artists have been invisible far too long to be brought down by a nasty virus.