Correcting the Canon: Addressing All-Women Exhibitions

Running until 4th February 2024 at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid, the Women Masters exhibition promises to correct history by shining a light on successful female artists who have been occluded from the Western art historical canon. Curated by Rocío de la Villa, it features nearly 100 works by artists such as Angelica Kauffmann, Clara Peeters, and Rosa Bonheur. The exhibition functions as a survey from the late 16th century to the early 20th century through eight contexts to women’s path to emancipation, ranging from ‘Enlightened Women and Academicians’ to ‘New Portrayals of Motherhood’.

Female artists remain undeservedly vacant from the canon. This is due in part to women being historically excluded from attending art institutions, exhibiting in academies and viewing nude models for life drawing. Many believe the precedent for the exclusive nature of the canon was also first set out by Giorgio Vasari who published Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects in 1550, a book comprising a series of artist’s biographies which were predominantly male and Italian.

Over time a cycle has emerged, with the same artists continually taught and lauded in schools and universities. Female artists were also largely deemed as homogeneous, believed to be capable only of painting fruit or flowers rather than engaging with historical, biblical and mythological themes. Artistic director Guillermo Solana stated that “one of the characteristics of the exhibition is that it shows us that women artists covered all subjects, that they were not confined to a particular genre”. Whilst this is undeniably important, it bears asking whether creating women-only exhibits also feeds into this separation of women from their male contemporaries.

Feminist art historian Griselda Pollock argues that selective and revisionist exhibitions are “tactically necessary” to correct the male-dominated art historical narrative. However, while all-women exhibitions may seem like the logical response to centuries of male-dominated exhibitions, the very act of divorcing women’s art from the larger narrative inadvertently reinforces certain subject matters and styles as typically feminine. By engaging with women artists separately from their male counterparts, we are perhaps even inviting reductive readings through only considering this artwork in the context of other female artists, thus failing to assert their place among well-known male artists. Through separating women, you are positioning them as unequal and further reinforcing their place beyond the realms of the canon. As the canon is not a physical list but rather a collective consciousness, it’s just not as simple as rewriting and starting again. With this in mind, a more productive endeavour would be to disrupt and reframe the narrative by working within the existing framework by inserting women alongside their pre-established male contemporaries.

Although all-women exhibitions alone may not possess the power to reshape the art historical canon, they are nevertheless important in establishing the names of unknown female artists, as lesser known names are likely to be lost among more famous pieces. Therefore, the value of these exhibitions is not to be underrated as they serve to assert the names and works of underrepresented female artists, away from the shadow of bigger names.

However, it cannot be denied that in redressing male-dominated narrative, gender is not the most worthwhile curatorial rubric. Whilst exhibitions such as Women Masters are certainly valuable in highlighting skilled female artists who have been under recognised in the history books, a more lasting impact would perhaps be made by disrupting the long-accepted narratives rather than forging new ones which consider art by women in isolation, rather than in conjunction with art by their male counterparts.

Image from Wikimedia Commons