Museum explore Women in the arts

Carla Bianpoen, Contributor, Jakarta

In 1971,Art News printed the provocative question, "Why are there no great women artists?" Since then, thousands of women accomplished artists have turned up and interest in them has flourished. Interestingly, women artists appear to have had a groundbreaking role in the development of art.

The issue was not poignant at the time the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) and the Whitney Museum of American Art were founded, in 1929 and 1930 respectively. Even though it was the result of willful acts of women, women artists remained in relative obscurity.

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller was one of three women who started MoMa out of a sense that there should be a focus toward modern art. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, a sculptor, and one who could not find support in established art circles provided space for under-recognized artists in her Whitney Studio, and set up her own museum in Greenwich Village in 1930 when the Met refused her collection of 500 works and a generous endowment.

Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, however, came with a totally new perspective when she founded the Museum for Women in the Arts in 1981. It was to focus on the hidden realities of women in the arts and gave a new focus to the history of art. This was all quite revolutionary 20 years ago! Holladay was inspired after she had difficulty finding information about the still-life paintings of 17th-century painter Clara Peeters, which she and her husband Wallace had admired while abroad.

Her decision inspired every single woman artist in America. "Yes, I subscribed to the plan. We all supported her," said one artist I met at CP Artspace in Washington DC. Support also came from men, her husband Wallace to begin with, who shared a passion for art while corporate support gave increasing stature to her efforts. More than 200,000 people have joined as members in support of the museum and its mission.

The museum's commitment encompasses women in all disciplines. To mark the opening of the museum in 1987, the Pulitzer Prize- winning composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich was commissioned to write a special concerto. Inspired by five paintings from the museum's permanent collection, she composed the Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra.

Holladay, founder and chair of the museum's board, was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women's Caucus for Art. She can look back with pride at her multi-story museum, the only national museum dedicated to women's role in the arts. The museum's permanent collection includes 2,700 works by over 800 artists ranging from the year 1580 to the present day, representing many different media, techniques and styles.

The museum's activities are as varied as its mission to bring recognition to the achievements of women artists of all periods and nationalities by exhibiting, preserving, acquiring and researching art by women, as well as by educating the public toward the awareness of women's past, present and future roles in the arts. * Current Exhibits

From June 14 through Aug. 11 the public has a chance to see the unfolding of arts development from another perspective.

Paintings from the permanent collection demonstrate that women have been active in the arts even before the Middle Ages, while the two six-fold screens by Yukinobu Kiyohara shows the art of one of the few women artists to achieve professional status in 17th century Japan. The exhibition, titled Feminist Art, shows the explosion of women artists coming to the fore since the 1970s.

Feminist in this sense is neither a style nor a movement. As art historian Lucy Lippard once said, it is rather a value system, a revolutionary strategy, and a way of life.

The changing way of life for women is part of the social change set in motion by profound technological and philosophical upheavals in the 20th century. Equal status with men and equal access for women were to balance a society of blatant male domination. "The Personal is Political" became a slogan. You're seeing less than half the picture without the vision of women artists and artists of color urged the Guerrilla Girls, who called themselves "the conscience of the art world".

Women appeared to have played a key role in the development of the first modern art "isms", also eradicating traditional boundaries within the art. Sonia-Terk Delaunay (1885-1979), for instance, integrated textiles and stage costumes into the realms of fine art. Lee Krasner (1908-1985) evolved a new manifestation of abstraction and earned early attention as an innovator. Using naked canvas and large spaces of color, Helen Frankenthaler, born in 1928, was a foretaste of color field painting. An accompanying video titled Not for Sale made by Laura Cottingham, with music by Yoko Ono, accentuates American links with feminism and art in the 1970s.

The 14th exhibition Book as Art explores artistic creations evoked by the temptations of food, while a mini-format presents creations by elementary school students in Bridging Communities: Technologies and Traditions.

The museum is located at 1250 New York Avenue, Washington, D.C., just a few blocks away from the White House and the Smithsonian. Tel: 202.783.5000, or visit nmwa.org.