The statistics Jerry Saltz lays out in his Village Voice column “Art and apartheid: The prime real estate is still a men’s club” will get any serious female artist’s blood boiling. At least they should!
Read the article and promise to do what you can to ameliorate those wretched numbers for women artists in New York. I’d like to think they’re better outside of The Big Apple. I wonder . . .
4 thoughts on “Attention Women Artists!”
Alyson, Thanks very much for tipping us off to this article in the Village Voice. Women artists have always been on the outside. But with the internet we have an opportunity to find new ways of operating. We can leap up by leaping over the whole gallery system. We have to ask to be noticed. We are not just working for ourselves. Art shapes the culture and we need our voices and visions to be part of that. So onwards!! I’ll write about this on my site too.
I’m wondering if this imbalance is limited to NY. Here in the Pacific Northwest, there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of women doing solo exhibitions, lectures, etc. Seattle seems to have a pretty good balance between men and women.
One of the comments frequently made about my work is that the viewer thought it was created by a man. Is this complimentary? Not so sure…
I think things are definitely not so unbalanced outside the city. I live and work in upstate NY and in all of the galleries I work with (all are outside NYC) the number of men and women artists that show and have representation is pretty even. At least six of these galleries are also run and/or owned by women. I have never felt as if I have missed out on an opportunity because I am a female. I haven’t been able to get into a NYC gallery yet but I think there are any number of reasons for that, and I am not willing to blame it on my gender.