Inclusive Art: Women Artists Are Gaining the Recognition They Deserve

Annie Renouf Whelpley, American, 1852-1928, Italian Women in the Weaving Room

 Lois Mailou Jones, American, 1905-1998,
Les Fetiches

I remember an article in the early 1970s by an art historian, Linda Nochlin, asking: "Why Are There No Great Women Artists?” Nochlin detailed how for generations institutional attitudes and obstacles had prevented deserving female art-makers from being recognized in the Western art history canon. The same was true for African-Americans and people of color.   

For women, recognition of their experiences, their voices, their talents, has come slowly. "Anonymous was a woman," Virginia Wolff proclaimed in a now-famous description. And they were, indeed, invisible, in every endeavor, in history, in art and music, science and sports.

Marion van Nieuwpoort, Dutch, 1950-2006.

The revival of the feminist movement in the early 1970s, which had been dormant since women won the right to vote in 1920, changed this. Slowly but surely. I saw it happen as I taught American women's history in the mid-1970s at the University of Toledo.  I had so few books to use when I started the course, but then, after a few years, came an explosion of scholarship: more research, dissertations, articles and books, more public exposure and recognition. It was about time. It was a beginning.

Irene Klestova, RU, 1908-89

A few years later, in the mid-1980s, during a career-change adventure, I discovered the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. It was a relatively new museum, dedicated to showcasing the art of women from early history. The DC humanities council's office was a block from the Museum, so on my lunch hour one day I wandered in and stayed too long. It was an emotional experience that has stayed with me to this day. The building itself is beautiful, with salmon-colored marble grand staircases and lovely detail, a perfect surrounding for the art. The breadth and depth of the art was fascinating, the start of a collection that has since evolved and grown up to the present.

Gerda Wallander, Sweden, Street scene

As public awareness has grown, so too has the awareness of  museums and cultural institutions. It's a very slow process. A few have begun to add women's art to their permanent collections, not just displaying it in an occasional exhibit here and there. I've been asking the Toledo Museum of Art to do the same.

The best news, and a model for other museums, came from the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) recently, which announced a year of exhibitions centered on female artists. Vision 2020.  The BMA's campaign "to address diversity gaps" also led it to deaccession seven post-war works by male artists to raise money for acquiring more art by women and people of color. What a brave and pioneering action!

Antonietta Brandeis, Austria, 1848-1910
Venice, Grand Canale, now in jeopardy.
These artists renderings will be priceless
to remember it as it once was. 

"The goal for this effort is to rebalance the scales and to acknowledge the ways in which women’s contributions still do not receive the scholarly examination, dialogue and public acclaim that they deserve,” said Christopher Bedford, the museum's director.

More museums should be researching the nature, extent and diversity of women's art from around the world.  They would do well to examine the efforts of Christa Zaat, the curator of  Female Artists in History  Zaat wants "to lift the veil of silence on our collective culture by sharing and celebrating female artists of the past." She focuses on artists from around the world whose work has been out of sight, out of mind. She especially wants to resurrect deceased woman artists, to give them a public arena to showcase their works. Zaat is illuminating their artwork through visibility on the Internet. She's doing yoeman's work in organizing and cataloguing the art to make it accessible, an enormous undertaking. For a visual feast, check out https://www.facebook.com/female.artists.in.history/  and https://www.facebook.com/notes/female-artists-in-history/shortcut-to-the-indexes-of-female-artists-in-history/2286591328292410/

Serafina de Senlis Louis,  French, 
1864-1942

Step by step,  women of achievement, in every field, are emerging from the shadows of obscurity into the light of day.  And wonder of wonder, women's art is now being bought by art collectors, a measure of progress in the world of art.

Mimi Gross, American, Gertrude Stein and the
 Secretaries, 1978

Nochlin's question has been answered in a lot of meaningful ways. There is still a long way to go, but the growing public recognition of women artists overtime is one of them.

Zainada Serebriakova, Russian

Some sources:
* http://ruthmillington.com/16-books-about-famous-female-artists-and-their-work/?fbclid=IwAR3zQsUkbZ7JiKJ2wRHuTdTHI_jsXs1__GqxQdzYt7_PWKyPSfxV-fH5x-s

* https://www.facebook.com/pg/female.artists.in.history/photos/?

* Note: In the same way the art of women over the ages has been brought into the light, so too were the works of women composers. Sandy Craig, a friend and neighbor in Toledo's Old West End, has collected the music of women composers since the early 1970s, and has one of the largest collections around. When I taught Women's History at UT, I invited Sandy to share some of that music with my classes. He was delighted to do it. It was an exciting time.
* Linda Nochlin, 1971, "Why are there no Great Women Artists?"

* https://hyperallergic.com/485669/city-of-women-female-artists-in-vienna-from-1900-to-1938-belvedere-museum-flying-high-women-artists-of-art-brut-bank-austria-kunstforum-wien/?

* https://www.culturetype.com/?f  A great source of information on black artists.

* https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/baltimore-museum-of-art-dedicates-a-year-of-exhibitions-to-women?

* https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/24/arts/design/black-artists.html?

* https//nosmokingmedia.com/features/art-herstory-christa-zaat/.
*https//hyperallergic.com/503942/two-women-in-a-mans-art-world/? about contemporary artists
* https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/arts/design/female-art-agency-partners-sothebys-artists-  
auction.html
* https://www.artnews.com/art-news/market/female-artists-resales-survey-13070/

St. Petersburg Old and New, November 2019

At the Moon Under Water with Sandie & Christopher (lower right); at the Chihuly Collection,
a colorful permanent exhibition; at Cerviche restaurant, another fav; walking about downtown. 

It's nice to be in St. Petersburg, Florida, on the lovely Gulf Coast, in November.  Sunshine, warmth, birds of paradise still in bloom, yellow lantana, pink daisies, plumbago.  Actually it's nice to be there any time, any season. I lived in Florida for some 10 years, and from time to time, like in Winter, I miss it.

At the Chihuly Collection

I was in St. Pete this time to visit friends Sandie and Christopher, who live downtown. I rented a car, but they warned me before I got there that parking would be a problem. Sure enough it was. Where we used to park on 5th Avenue outside the Bay Villa Condo anytime of the day or night, now every street downtown is posted with DO NOT PARK signs, Two Hour Parking signs, or hungry Parking Meters that gobble up quarters by the 15-minutes.  Fortunately, Christopher offered to park in an overnight garage a few blocks away so I could park in his (precious) spot at the Presbyterian Towers.

That made it easier for me and Sandie to use the car, get out and about, go food shopping, to Tyrone Mall, to her doctor appointments.  Sandie is having some medical issues and we were concerned about her health. I was a bit of a bug about her continuing to do physical exercises. I know how hard that is, but it's do or die. Keep moving or stop altogether and end up in a wheelchair. I know.  I know. I can be so annoying. "I just want you to be healthy and happy," I said. "I know."

St. Pete in my mind.
Old postcard (LP artwork)

Some things remain the same and some thing have changed. Downtown St. Pete is bustling with new restaurants, shops, museums, and 10-12 story Condos. Huge, luxurious, expensive condos. Construction is everywhere and constant, including in the area that used to be The Pier, which has been demolished. It's a bit overwhelming. Thank goodness the Gelato ice cream parlor is still there, and the Moon Under Water. Well at least for a while.

Christopher recently learned that the Moon had been sold to new owners. Oh my, we wondered, what would happen to this downtown icon? This old British Colonial Tavern on the Bay? It's been there forever. We decided we had to have dinner there and see if we could get more information.  Would the name change? The menu? The cozy wood tavern inside, with flags all around the walls?

We sat down and ordered. It felt the same. Bright unbrellas. Same menu. Same lovely view of the Bay, a picture of white sails and colorful boats across a blue horizon with a rising half-moon. How lucky to see the moon, a crystal whiteness this time, but the same moon my brother Loren and I watched so many times together when I lived in Florida, and often in this very spot.  I felt Loren nearby. I felt his closeness to Sandie, who had been such a good friend, and to Christopher, who had helped him publish his memoirs, An Asperger Journey. We toasted to friendships.

This is the amazing Banyon tree across from the Moon. My
grandkids liked to climb it whenever they came to visit. Alli
and Josh remember it, which makes me happy.

We asked our waiter about the change. He kind of blew it off. Little will change, he mumbled, it'll be the same. Same friendly service. A half smile. Not sure about the menu. Really? It will still be an authentic British tavern?  Christopher had gone inside and found fewer Colonial flags on the walls and more large TV screens in their place, such as you might see in a . . . Sports Bar.

Aha, okay, we get the picture. Nothing is constant but change. At least the view will always be there, or so we hoped. The whole park along the Bay could be covered with tall garish Condos one day. We put that thought aside. We took another sip of wine. We kicked back and enjoyed the moment. "It's all we have," we agreed.

"Unprecedented synthesis:" Hybrid War IS War

"Hybrid warfare is a pernicious form of aggression that combines political, economic, informational, and cyber assaults against sovereign nations. It employs sophisticated strategies deliberately designed to achieve objectives while falling below the target state’s threshold for a military response. These tactics include infiltrating social media, spreading propaganda, weaponizing information, and using other forms of subversion and espionage.”
General H.R. McMaster

The Constitutional definition of treason, lawyers and legal scholars say, is "aiding and abetting an enemy during war."  Since America is not at war, they argue, we should stop calling Trump and his syncophant Republicans "traitors." Their words and actions may be reprehensible, such as acting outside normal channels of communication and chain of command in the Ukraine affair, even unconstitutional, but they are not treasonous. Having been corrected several times, I've taken to calling them "traitors to Rule of Law." 

In reality, however, if we have to stick to a strict constructionist view of the definition of treason, we are indeed in a war.  And Trump, Barr, Pompeo, Pence et al, and McConnell and elected Republicans now running around defending the illegitimate president against impeachment, are indeed traitors.  

Russia is at war with the United States. No, it's not an armed conflict, boots on the ground, hand-to-hand combat, guns blazing, bombing American targets, destroying and taking land. It's a new form of war, the 21st century version. It's called HYBRID WAR. It's the war that Russia is waging against the US with the goal of dividing Americans against each other and against our government;  undermining democracy; weakening the EU, NATO, and post-World War II alliances;  smashing our standing in the world.

blazingcatfur.com

Gen. H.R. McMaster, a PhD historian, brilliant, forceful, fired by Trump because they disagreed, gave the best definition, worth reading word for word: 

"Hybrid warfare is a pernicious form of aggression that combines political, economic, informational, and cyber assaults against sovereign nations. It employs sophisticated strategies deliberately designed to achieve objectives while falling below the target state’s threshold for a military response. These tactics include infiltrating social media, spreading propaganda, weaponizing information, and using other forms of subversion and espionage.”

Gen. Mattis, another General who served Trump and then went out the door, is also an expert on Hybrid War, in fact one of the pioneers. As early as 2005, he and Lt. Col. Frank G. Hoffman, who was one of the first to use the term, called it "an unprecedented synthesis."  In future wars, they wrote, in an astonishing prediction of what we see happening now:  "An enemy of the state may employ conventional weapons in very novel or non-traditional ways. Hybrid war may might feature attacks against US critical infrastructure or transportation networks. It could involve an electronic take down of military and financial computer networks."

Russia is using all of these strategies against our country. These include augmenting and amplifying  the Republicans' anti-democratic tactics of gerrymandering, voter suppression and interfering in our elections and the electoral process itself, even at the state level.They include unceasing social media assaults, massive disinformation campaigns. The Russian bots and trolls, we have been warned, are out in force spreading lies and vicious propaganda, weaponizing information to create chaos, to divide Americans, to polarize our politics beyond measure, to undermine our government. These strategies fall just "below the target state's threshold for a military response," but they are weapons of war nonetheless; they are "forms of subversion and espionage," as Mattis and Hoffman noted, and they are being used effectively against our country.  

This is the war in which the Trump regime is engaged. This is the war Mitch McConnell and disgraced Republicans, who are putting politics before country, are aiding and abetting. This is the war they are defending by their rank abuse of power, their obstruction of justice, the war they are doing nothing about, not even allowing a vote in the Senate on House-passed election security bills.  They are hiding Trump's crimes, covering them up, another form of aiding and abetting. 

It is a massive cover up. A cover up of the facts and truth they know, many of them through direct intelligence briefings. It's a massive cover up, extensive and deep, beyond anything America has ever witnessed in our history. 

The Republicans in Congress, every one defending Trump and doing Putin's bidding, hiding and covering up Trump's crimes, are Enemies of the State.  They are committing treason by enabling Russia's hybrid war against the US, and by allowing it to continue with impunity. Many scholars, experts and commentators, looking at the carnage, believe that Putin is winning this war.

Some Sources:

https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/did-trump-commit-treason-in-front-of-putin-watch-for-yourself-1.6288334

https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/readers-respond/bs-ed-rr-trump-treason-letter-20180723-story.html

https://www.gq.com/story/treasonsplainer

https://francurrocarlog.blogspot.com/2018/04/what-is-hybrid-warfare-foreign.html, for further definitions and sources.

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-treason-clause-seldom-invoked-despite-threats

https://www.businessinsider.com/former-troll-russia-disinformation-campaign-trump-2017-10?fbclid=IwAR38U9I6CAf-hgt7BEFhebwyP_Gac2GGJsNGKrkLNxxs3BrnNOpbUomFznE