Essay Series 3.2: History has ignored, minimized, or erased women’s art, even if they were famous during their lifetimes.

The beginning of my understanding of the scope of the erasure of women was Katy Hessel’s 2023 presentation at the reopening of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. Hessel is a British art historian whose book, The Story of Art without Men, discusses the contributions of women in the visual arts from the 1400s onward. Her book focuses primarily on Western art and documents the work and influence of many brilliant artists over the past 600 years.¹⁴⁸

Hessel went to an art fair in 2015 and found no works from women displayed. She also knew of a 2019 study showing that men created 87 percent of art in the collections of 18 major U.S. art museums. Hessel also states that in London’s National Gallery collection, women created one percent of the art. Hessel created an Instagram account that highlights the contributions of women artists, does related podcasts, and wrote her book.¹⁴⁹

Hessel’s book was a revelation. I grew up thinking that women weren’t present in the art world until the time of the Impressionists, which started in the 1800s. I only learned about two women artists from that time: Berthe Morisot from France, and Mary Cassatt from the United States. Below are several examples of women artists who until recently were forgotten or dismissed.

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653)

Gentileschi’s story illustrates the obstacles women artists can face. She grew up grinding pigments in her father’s art studio and had her father’s encouragement to explore the arts. Gentileschi completed her first large-scale painting at age 17. She entered Italy’s Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, had royal patrons, and achieved international celebrity during her lifetime.¹⁵⁰

Yet she faced a huge obstacle when very young. A colleague of Gentileschi’s father raped her when she lived in her father’s house in Rome. Her father brought the man to court. The court subjected Gentileschi to torture during the trial while she continued to maintain that the rape had happened. Although found guilty, the rapist escaped punishment.¹⁵¹

Gentileschi later married, moved to Florence, and became well known in the art world there. Many of her paintings focus on strong women, and in her business, she tried to insist on fair treatment. Unfortunately, her contributions to art were forgotten or ignored until the 1970s when feminist scholars brought her work to light.¹⁵²

Lady Elizabeth Butler (1846-1933)

Butler was one of the most famous woman painters of her time. She began by drawing figures firing pistols at age 14, and went to an art school for women in London. Her work focused on battles and their impacts on the people in them. Butler worked on very large paintings, some of which were scenes from wars. One of them, The Roll Call, depicts the suffering of the men who fought in a battle during the Crimean War. People formed long lines to view it, and Queen Victoria bought the painting. Women rarely tackled such subject matter at the time or painted on such a large scale. Butler said she painted to show the grief and heroism of war.¹⁵³

Even though she was famous for a while, her work eventually faded into obscurity. She followed her husband around the world and raised her many children. In addition, critics devalued her work.¹⁵⁴

Ruth Asawa (1926-2013)

A more recent example of an artist facing obstacles and being ignored is the sculptor Ruth Asawa.¹⁵⁵ Her work involved creating wire sculptures.¹⁵⁶

Asawa was born in 1926 to parents who immigrated to the United States from Japan. Her parents were farmers, and Asawa started doing farm work at age 6. She also showed an early interest in art. She and her family spent much of the World War II years in concentration camps in the United States.¹⁵⁷

Later, Asawa couldn’t get work as a teacher because of hostility to people with Japanese heritage, so she studied art full-time, developed a unique way of creating sculptures by looping wire, and was a community activist. Asawa did her work while she raised six children. She received recognition in California during her lifetime and has had some major exhibitions in New York City. Now, her work is getting much wider exposure. One art critic said her work didn’t get the recognition it deserved earlier because her sculpting technique was associated with crocheting, a domestic art.¹⁵⁸

Guerrilla Girls

The omission of women artists has been a concern at least since the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1970s.¹⁵⁹ The Guerrilla Girls formed to protest suppression of the art of women and people of color. This group’s members are anonymous artists who wear gorilla masks in public and use the names of famous women artists as pseudonyms. In 1985, their first act of defiance was to paste posters in Manhattan documenting the lack of attention to women artists. They use humor, graphics, and facts to make their points. They have an online presence and do public speaking at performances. The artists remain anonymous 40 years later.^160,161,162

Reflections

Everyone needs to learn that women make substantial contributions to the arts. Two things could help promote this understanding. Students can learn about women artists’ accomplishments by choosing coursework that focuses on their work. Advocates could also push school boards and alma maters to require that arts education focus on women alongside men.

What has been your experience with education about women’s roles in art, music, or other creative types of work?