UK museums/galleries continue to exclude women

[Hagiography]

Well, this is pretty depressing.

'The National Gallery’s continued reliance on outdated art history is a failure of its duty as a steward of the British public’s art collection. Museums, particularly those like the National Gallery which receive significant public funds, have the responsibility to accurately communicate the history and relevance of the objects they own. They should also continue to innovate and respond to cultural changes.

A museum whose collection is less than 1% female is hardly representative of a country whose population is 50% female.'

theconversation.com/galleries-continue-to-erase-women-artists-in-their-blockbuster-exhibitions-184988

Totally agree. But have a look at Art Critic Barbie on Twitter for some pithy thoughts on the subject…

Love barbie reports.... she's doing awesome work.

What's most annoying is that they're increasingly pushing lgbtq shit.

(Museums and galleries)

This is very true and very damaging. I think some smaller galleries are doing a better job - at Milton Keynes gallery the current and previous exhibitions were both solo exhibitions of female artists.

At Easter I went to Copenhagen. There’s a big modern art museum just up the coast, called Louisiana.
They had four exhibition spaces, and two of the big exhibitions were of women - Sonia Delaunay and Diane Arbus. So it can be done…

Of course they are. It's a nice way of swerving having to deal with genuine inclusivity.

Thanks for the Barbie rec!

blogs.hud.ac.uk/hudcres/2019/april/art-activist-barbie/

It's just ... the Guerrilla Girls did all this already. There was uproar. And nothing changed.

Same as it ever was....

Yes, that Guerrilla Girls poster of only nude women in art galleries is still relevant all these years on.

Guerrila Girls are still going: www.guerrillagirls.com/

I'll admit writing my perspectives, I need more research on this matter.

Off the best knowledge I have, what if it's because of the original creators have been eg x over y, what would be gained by adding to the collections more works by y, if they are subpar in quality or if they have only a limited number of exhibitions by the y ?

I’ll keep this short because it’s late but under the Equality Act public bodies have a duty to “redress discrimination “.

That’s going well isn’t it.

in theory their exhibition policy could be challenged legally.

If only women artists earned big bucks…

I think the National Gallery is a lost cause, because the art they show is centuries old, and if women weren't accepted as artists when the works were created, the results will always be with us. But the Tate Modern is something else--if there isn't fair representation of women among the artists, and also in the way people are depicted in the the artwork, then it's fair to ask why. I don't know how balanced things are now. Probably not enough.

TeiTetua, the article discusses exactly the point that there are older female artists; they just don't get shown. The Artemisia Gentileschi exhibition in 2020 was the National's FIRST EVER show headlined by a woman. IN 2020.

'The lack of women in traditional art historical scholarship has led to the belief that there simply weren’t many, or indeed any, important women artists working in Europe in this period, which is entirely false'

I generally hate it when galleries try and "educate" me about their art. Most of the time they are totally inappropriate in their analysis, and in any case I prefer to draw my own conclusions. Little bits of text next to paintings are visually instrusive, like a television in a resteraunt.

And as far as allocation of wall space, while I think galleries should be conscious of looking for a variety of artists, I really would not like to see a quota syetm based on sex or any other kind of charachteristic.