Wall text from Mickalene Thomas: Femmes Noir at the AGO this past winter. Photo courtest of Joanna Wreakes.
Recently, the Baltimore Art Museum has made headlines for this announcement - they will only acquire work by women artists in 2020. The decision came following the disappointing results of the survey done by artnet News, which showed only 11% of all acquisitions and 14% of exhibitions at 26 prominent American museums over the past decade were works by female artists. These stats get even worse when we consider intersectionality - African American woman artists made up only 3.3% of the women artists who's works were acquired by these American institutions (source)
Disappointing but not surprising, right?
Accurate depiction of me reading the artnet survey results. Source.
Guerrilla Girls’ Do Women Have to be Naked to Get into the Met. Museum? (ca. 1989). Source.
This got me thinking, what are local institutions here in Toronto doing to address this imbalance?
Exhibition view of Femmes Noir at the AGO.
Photo courtesy of Joanna Wreakes.
In the spring of 2019 the AGO announced that they would be deaccessioning and auctioning off 20 works by Group of Seven member A.Y. Jackson. This caused enough of a stir in the public that the CBC actually published an article explaining deaccessioning and some reasons why the practice is carried out by museums and cultural institutions - it’s a great read for anyone who’s not familiar with the practice! The article also quotes curator of Canadian and Indigenous Art, Georgiana Uhlyarik discussing what the AGO would do with the money from auctioning off these pieces - it is designated for the purchase of new works for the Canadian and Indigenous collection. Ideally, these new purchases will reflect a more diverse collection for the AGO with works by women and particularly women of colour, but only time will tell.
I am hopeful that the AGO is on their way to including more women in both their permanent collection and feature exhibitions though. Last year the gallery hosted the first large-scale solo exhibition in Canada by American Artist Mickalene Thomas - Mickalene Thomas: Femmes Noirs. Currently, there are two feature exhibitions showing the work of local and international women artists - Hito Steyerl: This is the Future and Sandra Brewster: Blur. Never mind the recent acquisition of “Let’s Survive Forever”, an iconic infinity room by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama.
Results of the survery undertaken by artnet News and In Other Words. Source.
What examples have you seen here in Toronto (and beyond!) of feminizing museum collections? What is the next step museum professionals and visitors alike can take to continue to address this inequality in our collections and programming?
This summer the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA) presented “Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artist.” Believe it or not, this exhibit was the first major showcase of indigenous women (I am intentionally using small "I" indigenous, because the artists range in location and community). The exhibit features 115 objects, that span 1,000 years including paintings, sculptures, textiles and more.
This exhibit took my Facebook and Twitter feed by storm. Every time I logged into a social network platform to mindlessly scroll through articles and memes for a couple minutes I would see friends and acquittances posting pictures, think pieces authored by magazines like Vogue, and scholarly articles mentioning this exhibit. Words, like “ground-breaking,” “awe-inspiring,” and “revolutionary,” were often affixed to posts about this exhibit. But it was one term discussing Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artist, that really caught my eye. This term was “Corrective Art History.”
On now through August 18, the @artsmia is presenting “Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists,” the first major showcase to provide visibility to the indigenous women, both from Canada and the U.S. https://t.co/PC8kdfFj7l
— Ann Tracy (Áine Ní Threasaigh) (@anntracyart) June 18, 2019
Let’s back up for a moment. What is Corrective Art History? Corrective Art History is meant “to provide an affirmation for those who do not regularly see themselves portrayed in media or art.” Moreover, it is an effort to combat the lasting, damaging impacts of underrepresentation.
Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artist, is not the only Indigenous led exhibition which operates within Corrective Art History. More and more exhibitions are gaining attention in a post-TRC world. In the Spring of this year, an exhibition on the Poundmaker Cree Nation focused on the story of Chief Poundmaker, who was arrested after the colonial government of Canada failed to honour treaty promises. After six months, Chief Poundmaker was released from prison after contracting a fatal respiratory disease. For nearly 135 years the Western cannon wrote Chief Poundmaker as the villain of his story. The exhibition successfully sets the historical record straight and brings in First Nation voices to the Western cannon. While the state of Canada exonerated Chief Poundmaker on May 23, 2019, this exhibit shows that everyone from artists, researchers, and curators to ordinary everyday people can work against these harmful historical inaccuracies.
The exercise of Corrective Art History is important and necessary. As museum professionals we need to become uncomfortable with our own learned knowledge and let these exhibitions and art rewire our own inherent biases of history. We, like Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas, Kent Monkman, and the indigenous run exhibits, have to argue for something else.
Have you seen any of these exhibitons? What challenged you and how did you deal with these challenges? What are your thoughts? I really want to know! Leave a comment, send me an email (allyforand@gmail.com), or if Twitter and Instagram are more your speed my handle on both is @Ally_but_online.
Laurie Simmons, detail of Kaleidoscope House, 2001. Source.
It’s fitting that my final She’s My Muse article after nearly two years of writing under this column happens in the final days of Women’s History Month. As I stated (quite loudly) last year, March is almost over, but sexism and oppression remain in the art world, museums, and beyond. As my Museum Studies degree comes to an end, I can’t help but take a moment to be self-reflective. But in true She’s My Muse fashion, I will follow it quickly with a connection to current museum news and calls to action.
This column has been a place to grapple with how gender and feminism interact with museums, and how these spaces of power can be—and are currently being—transformed. She’s My Muse has not been an easy column to write; however, the moments of heartbreak and anger have been accompanied with learning and inspiration (and a healthy amount of self-doubt sprinkled in between). Together, we saw the rise of #MeToo and reflected on the memory (and re-memory) of prolific artists. I had the privilege of speaking with institutions that are advocating for marginalized creators and was continually inspired by the women in my class, in Toronto, and in the wider museum sector.
Finally, I set out to find muses and give other women a platform to share their own. I’d like to present you with a final one:
This post’s muse will look at the events surrounding photographer Laurie Simmons’ retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (MCA). Big Camera/Little Camera was curated by Andrea Karnes at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Chicago is the second stop of the travelling exhibition and MCA Director Madeleine Grynsztejn added an exciting twist.
The MCA has introduced a new tier of discounted admission. Anyone who believes they have been negatively affected by the gender pay gap can pay $12 admission rather than the full $15 price (from February 24 to May 5). This approximately 81% difference represents the 81 cents women make to every male dollar (source). The new admission price supports Simmons’ practice, which challenges gendered archetypes and disturbs the ‘American Dream’ through photography. Her constructed scenes use models, dolls, and props to challenge understandings of femininity.
Lack of representation, the pay gap, and its affects on artists and museum professionals is something the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) draws attention to year-round, with added social media campaigns in March. The NMWA’s #5WomenArtists campaign blasts these numbers across online platforms to draw attention to the sexism present in institutions. For example, out of a 2018 study of 820,000 exhibitions across public and commercial sectors, only one third were by women artists. When looking at museum professionals, women are still underrepresented in leadership positions, and the director positions they do hold are at museums with smaller budgets. The top three museums in the world (British Museum, Louvre, Metropolitan Museum of Art) have never had women directors.
MCA’s recent dedication to women in the arts is a positive step, especially with the MCA’s 2018 exhibition What Remains to Be Seen, which looked at Howardena Pindell and studied demographics of women artists in New York museums. However, these efforts are not without their limitations. Most notably, a single admission discount does not account for the even wider pay gap for women of colour. An admission price difference is a strong (temporary) statement, but this should not be without looking into further action that accounts for intersectionality.
We also need to consider how these initiatives can be implemented in local contexts, such as supporting Canadian women in the arts. The recently closed Mickalene Thomas: Femme Noires was a beautiful exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). Through monumental collages, Thomas’ work highlights the intersections between gender, race, and sexuality. She puts Black women at the forefront of her practice and critiques erasure in Western art history. However, Femme Noires is among only one other solo exhibition by a Black woman artist at the AGO, neither of which have been Canadian.
While the MCA is a leading example of what we have accomplished, there is always more to do to improve our structures and institutions. Change goes beyond the confines of this column, but I will be forever grateful for this tiny corner of the internet that has given me a place to discover powerful, intelligent, and dedicated women.
