2/12
I meant to post about this earlier, but I just remembered this example…so I will blog about it now. Over winter break I went to New York and visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. In the MET I literally walked around dozens of galleries looking for female artists.
Everywhere I went in the musem there were naked women drawn by men, and women in various poses, but none actually done by women. I remembered my days as a first year student here at the U of M when I took a Intro to Art History class. My TA had talked about the Guerrilla Girls and how they protested the MET’s lack of actual diversity. I remembered that the Guerilla Girls came to the UofM, but I couldn’t go, and I still regret it!
So, when we discussed the Guerrilla Girls and the MET in class two weeks ago, I immediately thought of my winter break experience. I was walking in the museum, specifically through 19th century Impressionists gallery, and I thought about the Guerrilla Girls. I went over to a staff member and asked if her if she knew where the female artists were and if they were in a special section or something. She replied, “oh, I don’t know..there is one or two down that way…I don’t remember their names…but I can’t think of any really.� I was surprised. I thought, shouldn’t a staff member be trained and know at least some female artists that are in the MET?
The MoMA was a different story, not as many female artists were represented as the male artists, but there were definitely some notable ones. I remember seeing some Frida Kahlo and almost an entire section of Georgia O’Keefe’s pieces, which were really cool.
Our discussion in class two weeks ago got me to think about how I’ve always seen women represented in “high art� versus popular art. When I was little I would stroll around museums looking at the naked women and thought, gosh, they are curvy and look really different than women do now…maybe it’s because they have no clothes on? My dad used to say that actresses in the 60s had more meat on their bones, and that they were “real women.� That was something I always thought was weird; if they were real women then, are they not real women now? Why are women now so thin?
Anyway, I have digressed, which means I’m out, or as Kanye said, “this is how we do.�
This is my most favorite painting in the entire world. I have just included this picture in this post solely because of that.