Collecting Her Thoughts: Women Art Collectors Across Time

In his introduction to 19’s 2021 issue on women collectors, Tom Stammers writes that “the renewed study of female collectors promises to reconfigure the history of art and the history of gender alike.” Across time, women’s access to the social and financial resources necessary to collect art has been different from that of their male counterparts and often more limited. Both because of and in spite of these differences, women have served as art patrons, developed ideologically and materially expansive collections, and promoted art in public arenas. Yet, women collectors have been systematically excluded from museum and curatorial studies, perhaps in part because their collections and practices may manifest differently. Discussions of major art collectors continue to prioritize men, even when women were involved as spouses in developing domestic collections, in donating to museums, and in developing legacies for themselves and their partners.

How does the study of female collectors challenge and expand existing scholarship? Who were these women, and how and why did they collect? How and in what ways did women live, work, influence, and collect in community with others? How do women’s philanthropy, art collecting, and collecting as activism intersect in and out of the museum? We invite papers that open conversations about feminist curatorial practice of the past and present, offering new methodologies for the study of collecting and women’s curatorial practice. We encourage scholars who may be early in their careers, those who may come from underrepresented backgrounds, or those who study multiply marginalized women.