Women artists still neglected -- March 15, 2018 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Can you name five women artists? Off the top of your head. No Googling.

Take your time. I’ll wait.

If you found the question tougher than you expected, as I did, we’re not alone. When the National Museum of Women in the Arts hit the streets of Washington and asked people to name five, a common response was, “Um.” Most people couldn’t.

The museum launched the challenge March 1 for Women’s History Month. Now in its third year, the #5WomenArtists social media campaign aims to make people aware of gender inequality in the art world.

It’s embarrassing to realize how few women artists’ names leap to mind – after Georgia O’Keeffe, of course – but it’s not entirely our fault. Women are often the subject of art in museums but rarely the creators.     

As the provocative poster by Guerrilla Girls, a group of anonymous feminist art activists, reads: “Do women have to be naked to get into U.S. museums?”

In 1989, women artists were less than 5 percent of the artists but more than 85 percent 

of the nudes in the modern art sections of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Surely, you say, things are better now. Nope. In 2011, women artists were less than 4 percent of the artists and 76 percent of the nudes in the modern art sections at the Met, the group reported.

If you look at a work of art in the National Gallery of Art, there’s only a 4 percent chance it was created by a woman, say researchers at the data analysis firm Priceonomics, who pored over the gallery’s online collection of nearly 100,000 works.

Male dominance on museum walls reflects when the art works were created, Priceonomics says, explaining that more than 70 percent of the art at the National Gallery was created before 1950 and only 4 percent since 1990, when gender parity was first achieved among debut artists.

The women’s museum sprang from another simple, but rarely asked, question: Where are all the women artists?

Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, now 95, and her late husband, Wallace, started  collecting art by women in the 1960s, opened their Georgetown home for art tours and then founded the private, nonprofit museum a few blocks from the White House.

Its collection of more than 5,000 pieces from the 16^th century to the present includes work by Louise Bourgeois, Mary Cassatt, Judy Chicago, Frida Kahlo and Amy Sherald, whose portrait of Michelle Obama was recently unveiled at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.

When the women’s museum opened in 1987, some women artists weren’t keen on being pigeon-holed by gender, and some critics panned it.

“A virtuous bore,” sniped critic Robert Hughes in Time magazine. He dismissed the museum as “a grimly sentimental waste of money, an idea whose time is gone” and predicted it would soon be irrelevant.

Except that it wasn’t.

Women artists are still exceptional, a nice way of saying neglected. But that’s changing. Millions saw the Google doodle on March 8, International Women’s Day, featuring 12 female artists.

Last year, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, one of the world’s oldest and most famous museums, had its first exhibition of work by Plautilla Nelli, a 16^th century nun considered the first woman Florentine painter. The Uffizi promises more exhibitions of art by lost women artists.

Rediscovering and restoring women’s art in Florence is the inspiring mission of American Jane Fortune – sometimes called Indiana Jane – and the Advancing Women Artists Foundation she founded.

Closer to home, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts had an exhibition of “Women Artists and Abstract Expressionism” from May 2016 to January 2017. You can find an audio tour on the museum’s website that features 16 of the nearly 300 women artists in its collection.

The #MeToo movement has raised consciousness, as we used to say, about the need for women’s perspective in all aspects of society, including the art world. But what action can we take?

Ask museums and galleries to exhibit more women artists. Praise exhibitions that strive for gender equity, criticize those that fall short. Share your enthusiasm with the staff and on social media, the women’s museum suggests.

And, of course, buy artwork by women.

Next year we’ll see if we can name five women artists without an “Um.” 

©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Stories of light help us weather winter's dark -- Dec. 15, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

At a holiday craft fair last weekend, a Christmas ornament made of wood caught my eye.

The hand-painted Canadian goose had a jaunty wreath around his neck – and a price tag of $14. I turned away.

Then the artist came over. 

“He has moonlight on his wings,” she said. I looked more closely, and sure enough, there was a faint dusting of glitter.

Suddenly, the goose had a story. That changed everything.

And, yes, he looks great on my Christmas tree.

We’re in a season of stories. In these, the shortest days of the year, we celebrate the winter solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa -- each with its own story of the triumph of light over darkness.

As seasons go, winter tends to get short shrift. No one ever said winter afternoon were the two most beautiful words in the English language, as Henry James did about summer afternoon.

While hardy skiers and sledders find joy in a bright, snowy landscape, for many of us the season brings more dreaded wintry mix than delightful winter wonderland.

Shakespeare’s play “A Winter’s Tale” is mostly remembered for its puzzling stage direction: “Exit, pursued by a bear.”

Fortunately, though, this is also a season of music. Many of us grew up on the musical story of the underdog “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” by Johnny Marks and Tchaikovsky’s charming “Nutcracker” and find comfort as adults in Handel’s sublime “Messiah.”

Long before the Weather Channel told stories of frightful weather, music regaled us with stories of wintry scenes. Perhaps no other musical work evokes chill winds and ice as perfectly as Antonio Vivaldi’s “Winter.”

The 17^th and 18^th century composer wrote 500 concertos and dozens of operas, sonatas and cantatas in his 63 years on earth. But the masterpiece most people think of first is “The Four Seasons.” He paired the music with four sonnets he may have written himself.

I happened to be at the National Gallery of Art last Sunday afternoon when the Tempesta di Mare, the Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra, performed Vivaldi’s “Winter.” The piece was part of a winter-themed concert in the West Garden Court, a peaceful indoor space with tall trees and statuary.

Vivaldi’s winter story unfolds in three movements, and the music to a remarkable degree tracks the story told in the sonnet.

The first movement portrays the sounds of someone shivering in biting, icy winds with chattering teeth and stamping feet. In the second we imagine someone sitting contentedly by a blazing fire at home, while people outside are drenched in pouring rain. In the third we are outside in the storm again, walking the icy path slowly, fearful of slipping and falling on the ice, but we crash to the ground anyway. Back inside, we still feel the cold wind.

“This is winter, which nonetheless brings its own delights,” the sonnet accompanying “Winter” concludes. In Vivaldi’s hands, it does.

At a time when many think Washington can’t do anything right, it’s worth recalling the story of the National Gallery’s free Sunday concerts, now in their 75^th season.

The museum had opened only the year before when the first concert in May 1942 welcomed wartime troops. The gallery’s director was inspired by the National Gallery in London, which held piano concerts during the Blitz of 1940 and 1941.

In Washington, the gallery has sponsored more than 3,000 free concerts. Performers come from all over the world. The concerts are scheduled from fall to spring, and start times vary. Seating is first-come, first served.

If we ever needed stories to brighten the mood and renew our faith, it’s now. In our deeply divisive presidential election, both candidates were selling their personal stories. Their narratives couldn’t have been more different, and voters, bless their hearts, chose the more entertaining one.

President-elect Donald Trump is building the story of his presidency with his Cabinet appointments, delighting some and horrifying others.

This winter will bring the Trump inauguration, protests and celebrations. In the meantime, enjoy the stories of the triumph of light over dark – winter solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.