Art Fix Friday: September 16, 2022

Blog Category:  Art Fix Friday
A black-and-white photograph of a light-skinned adult woman holding a newspaper with news about World War II. She wears a coat and her short, curly hair is caught in the wind.
September 16, 2022
9/16/22

A new study called Fame, What’s your name? quasi and statistical gender discrimination in an art valuation experiment examines gender bias in art. In a series of behavioral experiments, 1,112 Americans were asked to compare similar art works created by male and female artists. While some participants were given the name and gender of the artists and other groups were not, 54 percent of respondents overall preferred the works by women. 

Two paintings of roses in vases next to each other. The painting on the left is in lighter tones, the vase is standing on a white tablecloth and the background wall is gray. The roses in the painting on the right are painted before a black background and the vase is standing on a gray surface.
Eva Gonzalès, Roses in a Glass, ca. 1880–82, and Gustave Caillebotte, Yellow Roses in a Vase, 1882; Collection of the Dallas Museum of Art

In the third and fourth experiments, however, participants were asked which of the two works was more valuable and which artist was more famous, and the number of guesses for paintings created by women fell by 10 percent and 9 percent. These findings show that we assume other people discriminate based on gender, which in turn creates more opportunity for gender discrimination and perpetuates a cycle. “Gender discrimination in art comes not from personal aesthetic preference […] but people thinking paintings are more valuable and famous when painted by male artists,” study authors Robert Hoffmann and Bronwyn Coate write. 

Front-Page Femmes

Diane Noomin, comic artist who gave underground comics a feminist voice, dies at 75.

Hyperallergic examines why Joan of Arc has been misrepresented in art history as a highly feminine-presenting woman.

Artforum inspects Barbara Kruger’s work from the last five decades, which has retained an air of punk militance. 

Several panels show a woman in a doctor’s room during an abortion. The painting is colorful and expressive. The panel in the upper left corner shows a half-skeleton, half-human-figure. Another panel shows a woman lying on the ground, her flesh being eaten by vultures.
Juanita McNeely, Is it Real? Yes It Is! from 1969, a series of nine panels about the painter’s illegal abortion and medical emergency, will make its museum debut at the Whitney Museum starting this month; Photo courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, more depictions of abortion have entered art museums and galleries, the New York Times reports. 

A documentary about Nan Goldin’s fight against the Sackler family won the Golden Lion at the 79th Venice International Film Festival.

Cartoonist Kate Beaton chronicles her experience working in Canada’s oil fields in her graphic memoir Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, released on September 13.

A tequila decanter designed by Leonora Carrington in 2009, along with corresponding NFT, will be auctioned on BlockBar, Artnet reports.

The Barbican Art Gallery is staging a survey of feminist performance artist Carolee Schneemann, featuring more than 300 of her works.

Artnet interviews Linda Goode Bryant, a gallery owner who inspired MoMA’s upcoming exhibition Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces.

Shows We Want to See

A black-and-white portrait of two women with a dark skin tone. The woman on the right wears a head wrap and a black T-shirt that says “One Woman Army” in white capital letters. The woman on the left is leaning on her shoulder. Both look into the camera with a skeptical expression on their face.
LaToya Ruby Frazier, Shea with Her Best Friend, Amber Hasan, Shea’s Manager, Poet, Writer, Hip-Hop Artist, Actor, Comedian, Herbalist, Activist, Community Organizer, and Business Owner of Mama’s Healing Hands, Flint, Michigan, I, 2016–2017; © LaToya Ruby Frazier; Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery

LaToya Ruby Frazier: Flint Is Family In Three Acts at the Flint Institute of Arts is a multi-part exhibition of work by renowned artist Frazier, which advocates for access to clean and safe drinking water for all regardless of race, religion, or economic status. “In creating Flint Is Family In Three Acts, I see the role of photographs as empowering and enacting visible change,” Frazier remarks. On view through December 30, 2022.

The Kemper Art Museum exhibits Katharina Grosse Studio Paintings, 1988–2022: Returns, Revisions, Inventions. Grosse is internationally celebrated for large-scale, site-specific works that she paints across built and natural environments. With 37 paintings selected in collaboration with the artist, this is the first U.S. exhibition to explore the full range of Grosse’s studio paintings. On view through January 23, 2023.

About the Author

—Louisa Potthast is the publications assistant at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

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