Women by Women for Women

image credit: (left) Corinna Darcie, (upper) Phyllis Serota, (lower) Ivy Miller, (next five images) Sasha Huska, (remaining four images on right) Lois Goodnough

Maiden, Mother and Crone has been gracing the walls of Artful : The Gallery throughout the summer. I’ve just completed a re-hanging of the gallery for the opening celebration tomorrow night (weird timing I know... Covid Chaos!) As with the first iteration, after getting all the work up on the walls, I sat to have a look at the exhibit.

And once again, gazing around the space I am struck by the humanity of this show. The gallery is full of women, all kinds of women: strong, vulnerable, celebratory, sorrowful, introspective, and challenging. I am in good company as I spend my days here.

13 artists, synchronistically the same number of women artists in the 1984 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) exhibition that inspired the formation of the Guerrilla Girls in 1985.

The MoMA 1985: 169 male artists & 13 women artists.

Women remain underrepresented in art museums, except as the objects being depicted. Museums of art don’t document the history of art: they document the power and privilege structures of our world.

I hadn’t heard about the Guerrilla Girls until I attended WACK: Art and the Feminist Revolution at the Vancouver Art Gallery over a decade ago. Inspired by what I learned, I created this video: The Name of the Artist. Have a look and then come back, because here we are a decade later; same shit, and not even a different pile…

So how have the stats at our art institutions fared over the past decade?

85% of the nudes? Still women.

Number of women artists? Just over 10%, according the Guerrilla Girls latest “weenie counts”… that’s about a 7% increase in just under 40 years.

I'm a woman, and an artist, and I just made the whole damn show about women.

It wasn’t even difficult.

image credit: (left) Ivy Miller, (upper center) Sylvie Bart, (lower center) Phyllis Serota, (right) Kristina Campbell