VCB 20.3 Review

Abstract

This review examines the curatorial impulses of three exhibitions that are part of a recent flurry of shows which have focused, either directly or indirectly, on centuries of women’s marginality and invisibility in the arts. The exhibitions: ‘369 Remembered – The Women’; ‘Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria’ and ‘The Future is Female’ all build on the historiography of feminist and women’s art that’s been evident for more than half a century. In this review, attention is focused on the curatorial practices rather than the artworks themselves in order to explore how knowledge is embodied within curatorial processes. The mandate for the historical recovery of women’s contributions to art can be said to have begun in earnest in 1971 when Linda Nochlin asked the question that would shape feminist art history, ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ The answer, she argues, is to be found in the social and institutional structures that underpin artistic production, the art world and art history. Nochlin demonstrates that these structures produce gender inequality. She stresses that women were restricted in their access to training and patronage as well as being negatively affected through the values by which artists are historicized, which results in women artists, at best, being insufficiently investigated or appreciated, and at worst being excluded. Nochlin’s essay is still a leading text for many feminist art researchers seeking to understand gender inequality in the visual arts. Nochlin, together with other feminist art historians such as Griselda Pollock and Rozsika Parker, exposed the institutional, economic and socio-political reasons for women’s exclusion from the art world, and consequently from art history. In doing so they were instrumental in expanding the canon of art beyond a chronological story about celebrated Western male artists. They demonstrated that power relations in the wider social and political field are mediated through institutional practices. This means that the dominant set of values and perceptions come to be institutionalized so that they are reflected in the formal structures, social norms and organization of art institutions. That is to say, historical and contemporary manifestations of identity, difference and disadvantage shape cultural production.