Museum explore Women in the arts

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.