WomenArts
This is a Berkeley-based group: womenarts.org
Asian American Women Artists Association
San Francisco Bay Area organization that lists visual artist members alphabetically, with a page for each.
Website: www.aawaa.net
Crossing the Threshold
Celebrating the strength and resolve of thirty-two women artists, ranging in age from 70 to 95 years, who have persevered throughout the twentieth century and created a visual legacy for the future millennia.
Website: www.albany.edu/feature99/crossing_the_threshold/press_release.html
The Feminist Art Project
An international collaborative initiative celebrating the Feminist Art Movement and the aesthetic, intellectual and political impact of women in the visual arts, art history, and art practice, past and present. Based at Rutgers University, they host an online calendar of feminist art events, and they have links to many other resources.
Website: feministartproject.rutgers.edu
The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum
The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art is an exhibition and education facility dedicated to feminist art—its past, present, and future. It is part of the Brooklyn Museum and it is the permanent home of Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party. They have a Feminist Timeline at: www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/feminist_timeline and the Feminist Art Base at www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/feminist_art_base/index.php. The Feminist Art Base is the first online digital archive dedicated solely to feminist art. This ever-growing database offers profiles from some of the most prominent and promising contributors to feminist art from the 1960s to the present.
Women in Photography International
Alphabetical listing with links to artists’ own web sites.
Website: www.womeninphotography.org/wipihome.html
National Museum of Women in Arts
Some info from their website:
Did you know?
• 51% of visual artists today are women.
Only 28% of museum solo exhibitions spotlighted women in eight selected museums throughout the 2000s. 1
• “The men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I’m one of the best painters.”—Georgia O’Keeffe 2
Only 27 women are represented in current edition of H.W. Janson’s survey, History of Art—up from zero in the 1980s.
• From 16–19th centuries, women were barred from studying the nude model, which formed the basis for academic training and representation. 3
Though women earn half of the MFAs granted in the US, only a quarter of solo exhibitions in New York galleries feature women. 4
• “This is so good you wouldn’t know it was done by a woman.”—artist-instructor Hans Hofmann’s “compliment” to Lee Krasner 2
Women lag behind men in directorships held at museums with budgets over $15 million, holding 24% of art museum director positions and earning 71¢ for every dollar earned by male directors. 5
• Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 is more than three times the previous auction record for a work by a female artist, which was the $11.9 million paid for Joan Mitchell’s Untitled (1960) at Christie’s earlier in 2014. 6 It doesn’t, however, come close to the world auction record, held, naturally, by a male artist: $179.4 million with Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger. 7
Venice Biennale: The 2009 edition featured 43% women; in 2013, it dropped to 26%. In 2014, it is 33%. 8
• In a report from October 2014, Gallery Tally looked at over 4,000 artists represented in L.A. and New York—of those, 32.3% were women. 8
The good news is that, while in 2005, women ran 32% of the museums in the United States, they now run 42.6%—albeit mainly the ones with the smallest budgets. 8
From Maura Reilly, “Taking the Measure of Sexism: Facts, Figures, and Fixes”
“The more closely one examines art-world statistics, the more glaringly obvious it becomes that, despite decades of postcolonial, feminist, anti-racist, and queer activism and theorizing, the majority continues to be defined as white, Euro-American, heterosexual, privileged, and, above all, male. Sexism is still so insidiously woven into the institutional fabric, language, and logic of the mainstream art world that it often goes undetected.”
According to a 2014 study “The Gender Gap in Art Museum Directorships,” conducted by the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), female art-museum directors earn substantially less than their male counterparts, and upper-level positions are most often occupied by men. The good news is that, while in 2005 women ran 32 percent of the museums in the United States, they now run 42.6 percent—albeit mainly the ones with the smallest budgets.
Percentages of Solo Shows by Women:
Whitney 29%, Guggenheim and MOCA LA about 25%, MoMA and LACMA under 20%
In 2009, however, the Centre Pompidou took the bold step of organizing the nearly two-year exhibition “elles@centrepompidou,” in which the then head of contemporary collections, Camille Morineau, reinstalled the museum’s permanent collection with only women artists. During its run, attendance to the permanent collection increased by 25 percent. . . . “Elles” was a radical gesture of affirmative action—but one that was not long-lasting. In the subsequent post-“elles” re-hang of the permanent collection, only 10 percent of the works on view are by women—exactly the same as it was pre-“elles.” Moreover, the acquisition funds for women artists almost immediately dried up.
[Met 4% per GGirls] It’s not looking much better at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2004, when the museum opened its new building, with a reinstallation of the permanent collection spanning the years 1880 to 1970, of the 410 works on display in the fourth- and fifth-floor galleries, only 16 were by women. That’s 4 percent (Fig. 4). Even fewer works were by artists of color. At my most recent count, in April 2015, 7 percent of the works on display were by women.
Many positive changes at MoMA have to do with the MoMA Women’s Project (MWP), an initiative begun in 2005, not from within MoMA, but at the suggestion of donor Sarah Peter. Curators have done in-depth research on the women artists in the museum’s collection, where the ratio of male-to-female artists is about 5 to 1. The Modern Women’s Fund, a funding group of trustees and collectors, is now the umbrella for a series of ongoing initiatives, including educational and public programs, targeting acquisitions of work by women artists for the collection, as well as major solo exhibitions dedicated to women artists. The aim is to reassess the traditionally masculinist canon.
Women are often excluded from exhibitions within which one would think they would play major roles. While the 12th edition of Documenta, directed by Roger M. Buergel in 2007, included 53 women out of 112—a promising 47 percent—Okwui Enwezor’s edition, in 2002, praised for its postcolonial curatorial strategy, included only 34 women out of a total of 118 participating artists—29 percent. Of course, that’s far better than Catherine David’s edition, in 1997 (Fig. 5). The first female director included less than 17 percent women, reminding us that some women curators, even at the highest administrative levels, are not as attuned to parity as one might hope. Female arts professionals are often biased in favor of males; that, too, is part of the problem.
The statistics for the last few editions of the Venice Biennale are similar to those from Documenta, demonstrating recent improvements, but continuing problems. While the 2009 edition featured a promising 43 percent women, in 2013 that figure dropped to 26 percent under curator Massimiliano Gioni. This year’s [2015] biennale comes in at 33 percent (Fig. 6).
Women still get less coverage than men in magazines and other periodicals. Male artists are also, more often than not, featured in the advertisements and on the covers of art magazines; for instance, in 2014, Artforum featured a female artist only once on its front cover. Consider the September 2014 issue of Artforum, which featured Jeff Koons on the cover: of the 73 advertisements associated with galleries in New York, only 11 promoted solo exhibitions by women—that’s 15 percent.
In its report from October 2014, Gallery Tally looked at over 4,000 artists represented in L.A. and New York—of those, 32.3 percent were women. “There is still a real problem with who’s getting opportunities, who’s getting shown, who’s getting collected, who’s getting promoted, and who’s getting written about,” Hebron says.
At auction, the highest price paid to date for a work by a living woman artist is $7.1 million, for a Yayoi Kusama painting; the highest result for a living man was an editioned sculpture by Jeff Koons, which sold for $58.4 million. The most ever paid for a work by a deceased woman artist is $44.4 million for a Georgia O’Keeffe painting, versus $142.4 million for a Francis Bacon triptych. (One of the many reasons for the almost $100 million difference was articulated by O’Keeffe herself, “The men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I’m one of the best painters.”)
Such numbers contribute to how women artists are ranked, in terms of their market viability. The annual list Kunstkompass (“Art Compass”) purports to announce “the world’s 100 greatest artists.” It bases its statistics on the frequency and prestige of exhibitions, publications, and press coverage, and the median price of one work of art. In the 2014 edition, 17 of the 100 “great artists” are women. Artfacts.net does its own ranking based on art market sales. In their 2015 report 11 women made it into the top 100 slots. In 2014 Artnet.com revealed a list of the “Top 100 Living Artists, 2011–14,” examining the last five years of the market, with five women listed. Each year Artprice.com draws up an international report on the contemporary art market, as seen through the prism of auction sales, and presents the top 500 artists according to turnover. In its 2014 report there were just 3 women in the top 100.
And, yes, we need to keep crunching the numbers. Counting is, after all, a feminist strategy. In 2013, The New York Times Book Review responded to data showing it infrequently featured female authors by appointing Pamela Paul as its new editor and making a public commitment to righting the balance.
This is what we need to do in the art world: right the balance.
(posters by Hannah Rubin):
Catharine Clark Gallery, SF: 28% women
Modern Book Gallery, SF: 38% women
Stephen Wolf Fine Arts, SF: 20% women
(posters by Sally Deskins)
Hosfelt Gallery, SF: 46% women
Smithsonian Archives of American Art Feminist Initiative
WCA Sylvia Sleigh Legacy Campaign and Initiative:
The Sylvia Sleigh Legacy Campaign and Initiative, facilitates donations and raises funds to ensure that women’s art will be cataloged, collected and preserved in museums and institutions throughout the country.
The Legacy Initiative has six goals:
• To educate women on the importance of their legacy and cataloging and archiving their work and their papers.
• To facilitate the placement of women’s art in museums and permanent collections.
• To publish articles, essays and catalogs on women artists.
• To continue to cultivate and grow current WCA’s programs that focus on legacy.
• To partner with and support other organizations that are working towards the same goals and mission of WCA.
• To procure funding to meet these goals through development of WCA programs on fiscal receivership, sponsorshipand planned giving.
This important initiative was made possible by the generous donations of the Estate of the late Sylvia S. Alloway. Sylvia Sleigh, an artist and life long advocate for women in the arts, was selected to receive the WCA Lifetime Achievement Awards in 2011, but passed away before receiving the award.
In 2011, the President of WCA, Janice Nesser-Chu, worked closely with the executors of Sleigh’s estate, Douglas John and Paula Ewin, to begin to develop and facilitate the Legacy campaign. The first donation to WCA was Sylvia’s piece “Turkish Bath.” This funding is the foundation for the campaign and will be the impetus to encourage others to follow in her footsteps. In partnering with the Women’s Caucus for Art, Sylvia’s legacy will insure that the work continues, that women are exhibited and written into history.
WCA looks forward to partnering with other donors and arts institutions in expanding its Legacy Campaign and Initiative. In November 2011, we facilitated a donation of Sylvia Sleigh’s piece to the permanent collection of a museum at a women’s college in Oakland, California – Mills College. Lawrence and Susanna Delgado in an Interior, 1968, will now be on view to be appreciated and studied by the next generation of women art historian and artists.
The partnership will also allow the WCA to be more philanthropic and aid others in making sure that women’s art is recognized and valued.
Joan Mitchell Foundation: Creating a Living Legacy (CALL):
Creating a Living Legacy (CALL) is an initiative of the Joan Mitchell Foundation designed to provide support to older artists in the areas of studio organization, archiving, inventory management, and through this work create a comprehensive and usable documentation of their artworks and careers.
This site is a publicly available resource to assist an artist, artist’s assistant, Legacy Specialist, family member, or friend of an artist in the process of career documentation.
Aspen Institute Artist-Endowed Foundations Initiative
(http://www.aspeninstitute.org/policy-work/nonprofit-philanthropy/artist-endowed-foundations)
Did you know that on Oct. 3 the Aspen Institute Artist-Endowed Foundations Initiative/AEFI presented an invitational, small group session for Bay Area artists interested in philanthropy and planning for their life's work.
Artists’ Conversation: The Bay Area will draw on the findings of AEFI’s National Study of Artist-Endowed Foundations to promote awareness of the ways artists may determine whether a foundation is an appropriate choice, and to share information about how to plan effectively for a foundation that will successfully fulfill its charitable purpose.
Offered periodically in collaboration with local cultural institutions, AEFI's Artists' Conversations help artists and their spouses/partners, as well as artists' surviving spouses and heirs, explore considerations in creating an artist-endowed foundation.
Panelists for the Bay Area Conversation Include:
Leah Levy, Director, The Jay DeFeo Trust
Mary Clare Stevens, Executive Director, Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts
Christa Blatchford, CEO, Joan Mitchell Foundation
Stephen Urice, Professor of Law, University of Miami School of Law, AEFI Advisor
Christine J. Vincent, Project Director, AEFI
Organized in Collaboration with:
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Lawrence Rinder, Director
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Julian Cox, Founding Curator of Photography and Chief Curator
Oakland Museum of California, René de Guzman, Senior Curator of Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Janet Bishop, Curator of Painting and Sculpture
Bay Area Museums:
SFMOMA
Website highlights Painting and Sculpture 6 of 27 women and Photography 6 of 30
Berkeley Art Museum MATRIX: