Women Reclaim the Art World

2008, according to ArtNews, was a notable year for women in the art world. For the first time ever, the Centre Pompidou, the highest grossing, most looked at modern art museum in Paris, turned over its permanent galleries entirely to women artists. Connie Butler, now chief curator of drawings at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, points out that MoMA is buying more and more work by women. “I think it is on the institutional agenda in a way that it wasn't a few years ago. Things have changed. Obama is president," she said. Nancy Spector, the Guggenheim’s chief curator, also reports drastic changes at her museum: "When I started here 20 years ago, the discourse about gender issues was not even present in the museum. Now our contemporary collections are just filled with women artists. We buy what we think is the best work, and it is very often by women." Alongside these notable institutions, the Whitney Museum of American Art has also mounted quite a few retrospectives of women artists in recent years. Art critic Jerry Saltz, writer for New York magazine, created quite a stir on Facebook last May: he counted the pieces by women in MoMA's painting and sculpture galleries and proceeded to accuse the museum of practicing "a form of gender-based apartheid. Of the 383 works currently installed on the 4th and 5th floors of the permanent collection, only 19 are by women; that's 4%. There are 135 different artists installed on these floors; only nine of them are women; that's 6%. MoMA is telling a story of modernism that only it believes." Informal studies like these, done especially by social media outlets, have raised awareness of gender imbalances in the art world. “According to the Brainstormers, there are at least half a dozen New York galleries that are now close to 50-50, including Galerie Lelong, D'Amelio Terras, 303, and PPOW. Lombard-Freid's September show, ‘The Girl Effect,’ featured work by seven international women artists” says ARTnews.

Various female artists mentioned in the ARTnews article:

Louise Bourgeois

Atsuko Tanaka

Artists mentioned in the ARTnews article whom we also exhibit at the GMOA:

Georgia O'Keeffe

Alice Neel

The Russian Art World

Although Russia was virtually free of art censorship in the late 80’s and 90’s, it has more recently become quick to dismiss and destroy pollitical and dissident art. The Russian art pax ended in 1998, 

When the artist Avdei Ter-Oganian was charged with breaking a prerevolutionary law against provoking religious tension, reactivated just for this case, after he used Orthodox Christian icons in a performance. Faced with a jail term, he fled to the Czech Republic, where he was granted political asylum.

Since then, artists and curators have been under attack by Russian governmental authorities. One case featured in ARTnews centers on two curators on trial for inciting religious hatred. 

They have been accused of breaking a law passed in 1996 against inciting religious hatred. Andrei Erofeev, the critic, scholar, and former head of the Tretyakov Gallery’s department of current trends, and Yuri Samodurov, the former director of the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Public Center, face fines and/or prison terms of up to five years if they are convicted.

 Apparently, one of the witnesses at trial proclaimed that the pieces featuring Christian worshippers praying to Mickey Mouse catalyzed his wife’s premature death. “Such blasphemy took away her will to live,” He said. An orthodox priest also spoke up, calling Erofeev a “servant of Satan." Erofeev and Samodurov aren’t alone in these cultural and societal “crimes." Young artists are stirring up the media and the government with a new wave of actionism, a movement based on political provocation. One group of young people have riled up the local authorities by performing “Monstrations”—flash-mob street parties carrying messages like “Where am I?”, “Return me to Mars!” and “Pigs are humans too." The artists have been charged with mass disturbances, arson, and defacement of private property, all of which they have denied. ARTnews delves into other contemporary cases involving taboo messages leading to jail time and arrests.

 It seems that the only person who has time to make statements connected to art is Prime Minister Putin. Visiting the gallery of the nationalist painter Ilya Glazunov in June, the former president advised the 79-year-old realist to lengthen Prince Oleg’s sword in a painting of the medieval princes Oleg and Igor. Putin thought the sword looked more like a knife for cutting sausage. Glazunov said he would take the prime minister’s suggestion.