A gallery of one's own

There are three women on this year's Turner prize shortlist, and female gallerists dominate the art world. So what's the point of a museum of art by women, asks Joanna Moorhead

 Blog: Charlotte Higgins's verdict on women-only galleries
Joanna Moorhead
Monday July 28 2008
The Guardian

To see this story with its related links on www.guardian.co.uk/ site,
go to www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/jul/28/turnerprize.art

It's one of the best-kept secrets in the British art world, hidden away in a building a 10-minute taxi ride from Cambridge station. But visit this collection - displayed in the sunny, spacious corridors of a modern university college - and you could be forgiven for feeling puzzled. What, you might wonder, is the point? What brings all this disparate work together?

It is wildly eclectic. The pieces here range from colourful abstracts to country scenes; from industrial woodcuts to a wooden sculpture of a horse; from a Klimt-inspired portrait to a cartoon representation of yin and yang. Outside in the garden sits an arresting, figure-like bronze, entitled Ascending Form; another sculpture is a memorial to a parachutist.

Confused? You would be. But check out the names of the artists on show, and the penny drops. Barbara Hepworth and Elisabeth Frink; Maggi Hambling and Mary Fedden; Paula Rego and Sandra Blow. All big names in the art world - and all women. And there you have it: this is New Hall College in Cambridge, the rather unlikely, and certainly unsung, custodian of the world's second-largest collection of art by women (the largest is at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, in Washington, DC).

The New Hall collection numbers more than 350 works and dates back to the early 1990s, when the college - conscious, perhaps, of both the art collections of its more established neighbours, as well as its own bare walls - had the rather smart idea of writing to 100 women artists (New Hall is one of the two remaining all-women colleges in Cambridge) to ask them to donate a piece of work.

Appeals to artists to donate works for free often meet with a fairly low success rate, for obvious reasons. But, to the college's surprise and delight, this one was a huge success. More than 75% of the artists approached agreed to give a piece of work - evidence, says the writer and critic Marina Warner, of the fact that many women at the time felt they were being ignored, and that not enough venues were exhibiting their work. "They were pleased to have somewhere to show it," she says. "At the time, [US art activists] the Guerrilla Girls were rampaging around, complaining how there were no shows of women artists. Women at the time wanted their work to be taken seriously, and to be shown."

The result - many more donations down the line, as work has continued to flood in - is, says Warner, a "stunning collection". Julia Peyton-Jones, the director of the Serpentine gallery in London, agrees: "stellar" is the word she uses. "It'sincredibly impressive," she says.

Does it, though, have continuing relevance, especially in a year when three out of the four contenders for the Turner prize are female - or is it, in the context of today's arts scene, anachronistic? Peyton-Jones thinks that's going too far; but she points out that, in the relatively short time since New Hall set up its collection, the British arts scene has broadened hugely. "Today's art world is so wide - what it embraces isn't limited by gender or medium or form. In that sense, a collection of art by women is out of the times we live in, because both men and women are making art now, and gender doesn't inform how we look at art or how we engage with it."

Maureen Paley, director of the eponymous London gallery (home to Gillian Wearing and Wolfgang Tillmans), agrees that the collection in Cambridge is unusual but important. She represents as many female artists as male ones, and says women seem to be on an even footing in today's arts world; still, she says, there's a need to be vigilant against misogyny in every sphere. New Hall serves as a reminder that, while women artists might feel equal now, it wasn't so long ago that many were marginalised. "It was put together at a time when there was more struggle, and perhaps there's a tendency to historical amnesia," she says. "If so, I think it's good to have a collection like this to remind us of how things were. Today's younger women wouldn't want to be categorised in this way, but that's the privilege of the younger generation. Some of the pioneers who made that possible are represented in this collection, and it's right not to forget who they were and how they had to battle."

In Washington, the director of the National Museum of Women in the Arts goes even further. History is important, Susan Fisher Sterling believes - but things aren't all rosy in the contemporary arts world. "People think things today are different, but they might not be quite as different as all that," she says. "Art by women still doesn't tend to fetch as much at auction as art by men. And though auction prices are only one way of judging the value of art, it's still significant."

What's more, Fisher Sterling says, "not all women would agree that it's easy to find somewhere to exhibit, even these days. One of the greatest strengths of our gallery, in my view, is that we are a space for women to exhibit, in one of the world's most important cities. It's still not always that easy for women artists to get that level of profile."

Though the Washington collection, like New Hall, contains only art by women, it covers much more ground historically than the Cambridge one. It has more than 3,000 works by women through the ages, from a painting by the 17th-century Italian painter Elisabetta Sirani to contemporary paintings and sculpture by Louise Bourgeois and Louise Nevelson. "It's a museum of art by women - a tribute to the small but determined band of women who managed, against the odds, to make art at a time when it was extremely difficult for women," Fisher Sterling says.

The Washington collection, housed in a large, handsome building a stone's throw from the White House, is firmly on the tourism trail in the US capital. That's a role New Hall would like to play. Thanks to a grant of £100,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund, it has just appointed its first curator, Amy Jones, whose job it is to refine future acquisitions. (There's a private acknowledgement that, in the past, the college welcomed more or less any woman artist willing to donate; it's felt that from now on it should restrict itself to more "collectable" works.) Thanks to a gift from an alumna, New Hall is about to become Murray Edwards College, and the idea is not only to up the college's academic profile, but also that of its art collection. Though visitor numbers have tended to be in the low hundreds, the ambition is to get at least 1,000 through the doors next year. Anne Lonsdale, New Hall's president for the past 13 years, says wryly that she feels increasingly like the head of an art gallery.

Whatever its future, the collection will almost certainly continue to be controversial - even for the women whose work it showcases. Two of its highest-profile artists, Maggi Hambling and Mary Fedden, are sceptical. "I don't approve of women's art in any way," is Hambling's brusque verdict. "I don't take part in women's exhibitions. As far as I'm concerned it's irrelevant whether an artist is male or female, whether their hair is red or green, whether they're gay or straight. And what's more, I don't approve of artists giving their work away for nothing." So why has she donated to this women-only art collection? She says that a delegation from the college came to her studio to look at a painting they liked the sound of, Gulf Women Prepare for War, based on a photograph of women in hijabs firing mortars in the desert. "They said they'd like it," Hambling recalls. "I muttered the word 'payment', and they said we don't pay for our work, it's all donated. I was too polite to say I didn't approve of all that, so somehow I agreed to give it and that was that." The painting now hangs on the college wall, and Hambling can't be all that critical of the place, as she has also painted portraits of the last two college presidents.

Fedden has her doubts, too. "It seems a bit strange to me," the 92-year-old says. "It feels to me that it's never been that difficult for women, and certainly it isn't that difficult now. The main thing is that women are people, and men are people, too."

Those who defend the collection point out that it provides a powerful narrative of the recent history of art by women, and testifies to the breadth, quality and scope of work by women. "There's definitely a celebratory aspect to it," says Rebecca Fortnum, a teacher at University of the Arts in London whose work is included in the collection. "It's marking the fact that there are so many wonderful women artists around. What I really like about it is that it's the one place where I can go and see, all together in the same building, the work of all my female peers and colleagues. It's an inventory of what's happened to art in Britain over the past 20 years, as seen through the work of women".

 

 

SYMPOSIUM - PRESS RELEASE

Thursday November 15th 2007 – 6:00-10:00pm

‘CHANGING HISTORY’
Founder and Chairman of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. to address London Symposium on British Women Collectors

Who: Mrs. Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, Founder and Chairman of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) and a noted collector herself, will deliver the keynote address at a unique evening Symposium on British Women Collectors, to be held at the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts in London on 15 November 2007. The symposium will explore how exemplary women overcame the cultural assumptions and restrictions of their times to participate in the art world as active and influential collectors, shaping public taste and building important artistic legacies. The Symposium poses the intriguing question as to why and how women collect and whether distinctive patterns emerge across time and nationalities.

Symposium speakers and topics:
Keynote Address:

The Joy of Changing History

Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, Founder and Chairman, National Museum of Women in the Arts
While traveling in Europe in the 1960’s, Wilhelmina Cole Holladay and her husband, Wallace F. Holladay, admired a 17th-century still life by Flemish painter Clara Peeters. Upon their return to the U.S., the Holladays sought information on Peeters, but, to Mrs. Holladay’s surprise, Peeters’ name could not be found in any of the art history survey texts. In fact, the more she researched, the more she found that these texts did not mention any female artists. Since that startling discovery, Wilhelmina Cole Holladay has made it her mission to bring to the forefront the accomplishments of talented women through collecting, exhibiting and researching women artists of all nationalities and time periods.

Mrs. Holladay founded the award-winning National Museum of Women in the Arts 20 years ago, and it remains the only museum dedicated solely to celebrating the achievements of women in the visual, performing and literary arts. Its permanent collection contains over 3,000 works by more than 800 artists and provides a comprehensive survey of art by women from the 16th century to the present. The Library and Research Center holds 18,500 books and exhibition catalogues, and more than 18,000 files on women artists of all periods and nationalities. The museum is located at 1250 New York Avenue NW, Washington, D.C., in a landmark building near the White House. www.nmwa.org

In 2006 Mrs. Holladay was awarded the National Medal of Arts from the United States and the Ordre national de la Légion d’Honneur from the French government. In 2007 she received the Gold Medal for the Arts from the National Arts Club in New York City.

Symposium Speakers:‘Whatever you have chosen, I am sure is best’. The Rothschild women as artists, collectors and patrons

Melanie Aspey, Director, The Rothschild Archive
Melanie Aspey will discuss the lives, artistic tastes, marriage patterns and inheritance of three generations of Rothschild women (1785-1935), and how these shaped the Rothschild women’s lives and influenced the building up and the distribution of significant art collections. Melanie Aspey joined The Rothschild Archive as Archivist in 1994, succeeding Victor Gray as Director in 2004. She edited The Rothschild Archive: Guide to the Collection, (London, 2000) and has written about aspects of the Archive’s collection and Rothschild history for a number of journals and publications. Prior to joining Rothschild, she was archivist and records manager at News International plc (publisher of The Times and other British daily and weekly newspapers). She began work for the Business Archives Council in 1984 subsequently serving as a trustee and chairman of that organisation for a number of years. She is currently a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the European Association for Banking and Financial History.

The Davies Sisters of Gregynog – artistic education, travel and collecting

Dr. Ann Sumner, Director of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts and formerly Head of Fine Art at the National Museum Wales has published extensively on the pioneering Davies sisters, whose collection of Impressionist paintings is housed in the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff. Her recent research has revealed that these spinster sisters from rural Montgomeryshire, who were strict Calvinistic Methodists and sabatarians, were far more educated with regard to art history and much less reliant on male advisers than had previously been realized. They were extremely well educated and traveled widely in Europe and the Middle East. Dr. Sumner has been given access to the unique Davies family archives and recently contributed a chapter about their art education and early collecting to the book Things of Beauty: What two Sisters did for Wales published in July 2007 to coincide with the groundbreaking and critically well received exhibition Industry to Impressionism which runs until January 2008 at the National Museum Wales.

‘In spite of bombs and broken windows’: Queen Elizabeth and the arts in wartime
Dr. Susan Owens is Curator of Paintings at The Victoria and Albert Museum. Between 2002 and 2007 she was Assistant Curator of the Print Room at Windsor Castle. She has written and lectured on various aspects of British Art. Her publications include Watercolours and Drawings from the Collection of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (2005), and Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery (2007) Dr. Owens read English at Oxford, followed by a Master’s degree in art history at the Courtauld. Her Ph.D. (University of London, 2002) was on Aubrey Beardsley and satire.

 

 

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