Women in the Nation's Collections


Upon the centennial of women’s suffrage, museums nationwide are marking the anniversary with a wide range of initiatives. This panel focuses on collections in Washington, DC, both as the city where the historic legislation passed in 1920 as well as the site of a continued push for progress for all women. Inspired by the National Gallery of Art’s forthcoming Women 20/20 installations and the Smithsonian Institution’s Because of Her Story project, this session seeks to explore methods of telling alternate histories of art in museum collections that have a significantly low proportion of works by women artists, and an even lower proportion of works by women of color. How might we emphasize other roles, such as patrons, subjects, donors, and dealers of art? Can an increased focus on cataloguing, provenance research, and digital tagging or mapping reveal hidden or anonymous women who are part of a work’s story? Can we foreground mediums other than oil painting, such as sculpture, works on paper, decorative arts, and time-based media? How might we rethink collecting practices (and priorities) in order to build more diverse national collections? How do we bridge the gap between institutional traditions and our aspirations for greater inclusivity? This session will explore academic and curatorial perspectives on decentering traditional paradigms, developing alternative parameters of taste and quality, and forging a new model of producing an expansive history of art in the nation’s collections.

Field of Study:
Art History
United States of America
Twentieth Century
Modern (1800-present)
Nineteenth Century

Chairs:
Catherine Southwick,National Gallery of Art - c-southwick@nga.gov , Anjuli J. Lebowitz,National Gallery of Art - a-lebowitz@nga.gov and Emily Ann Francisco,National Gallery of Art - e-francisco@nga.gov

Where Are All the Women?: Advocacy, Politics and the National Statuary Hall
Sierra Rooney, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
The Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative: An Inside View
Kate Clarke Lemay, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Dorothy Moss, National Portrait Gallery Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of Women in the Arts: What’s Next
Kathryn Wat, National Museum of Women in the Arts