The University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative has released its Inclusion in the Director’s Chair study, which analyzed 1,500 top films from 2007 to 2021 for gender and race/ethnicity representation. The report revealed that female directors of top-grossing films reached an all-time high in 2020 (15%), but that the percentage of women of color directors did not change. Fewer than 2% of all top-grossing directors were women of color across 15 years.
“The numbers throughout the report offer a reason to be optimistic…But we need more…to ensure that women—and women of color in particular—have career sustainability and the opportunity to tell stories that reach audiences,” said Dr. Stacy L. Smith, founder of the Initiative. In response, she has created the new AI2 Accelerator, which will award a $25,000 scholarship to a woman of color in film school as she completes a thesis film and prepares to enter the industry.
Front-Page Femmes:
Betty Davis, the trailblazing Queen of Funk and a fashion pioneer, has died at age 77.
Gallerist Julie Saul, who worked to elevate contemporary photography in the art world, has died at age 67.
The Harvard Business Review reports on a new study revealing that women of color in the architecture industry report the highest levels of bias.
Artsy reviews The New Bend, currently on view at Hauser & Wirth, in which leading contemporary artists pay homage to the pioneering quilters of Gee’s Bend.
The New York Times profiles interdisciplinary artist Jennie C. Jones, who takes her inspiration from the history of Modernism and the Black sonic avant-garde.
Writer and curator Kimberly Drew is joining Pace Gallery as an associate director.
ARTnews reviews painter Rachel Rose’s current show at Gladstone Gallery, which presents the artist’s commissioned creations alongside works on loan from the Yale Center for British Art.
Hyperallergic reviews Jennifer Packer’s current exhibition at the Whitney, which “shows us the responsibility of seeing.”
The New York Times profiles the Yiddish scholars who are rescuing novels written by female Jewish immigrants from obscurity.
Art in America reviews Baseera Khan: I Am an Archive at the Brooklyn Museum, in which “Khan positions the body as an essential site of knowledge and cultural retention.”
Shows We Want to See:
Opening tomorrow at Fotografiska in New York, Nude presents the work of 30 female-identifying artists from 20 countries who explore the female-identifying gaze as it centers on the naked body. Across 200 works of photography, film, and installation, the viewer receives a comprehensive global view of what the body means, how it is used, and what it tells us about modern society from a female-identifying perspective. The Guardian recently reviewed the show. On view through May 1, 2022.
At the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Being Muholi: Portraits as Resistance explores the life and work of internationally renowned photographer and visual activist Zanele Muholi. The exhibition features black-and-white self-portraits and the U.S. debut of the artist’s new paintings and a new bronze sculptural work. Also included are self-portraits made before and after the COVID-19 quarantine that use found objects to address economic and environmental inequities. Artnet recently interviewed the artist. On view through May 8, 2022.