Seminar in Contemporary Art, Fall 2010: D.U.M.B.O

Where are the WOMEN?

Our class first met at Smack Mellon and had the pleasure of viewing work by Charlotte Schulz and eteam's Gallery Cruise. Both artists explore time and space, while also questioning the real and the imagined through an installation piece and drawings. We then headed to A.I.R Gallery and Central Booking NYC .

But seriously: WHERE ARE ALL THE WOMEN?

Statistics show that around 60% to 70% of students in art schools are women. However when looking at the percentage of women in high curatorial, and museum board positions, along with gallery representation the number plummets to around 13% women...............

Is there a Dr. Claw somewhere running the show and preventing women from being heard?

Highly doubtful and thankfully there are galleries like A.I.R whose mission is to specifically represent and show work from women artists. The gallery was created in response to the lack of space dedicated to women artists in the late 1960's.

However it would appear that there is still an issue with major galleries exhibiting works created by women. Though there has been powerful and productive strides towards this issue it is still far from being resolved.

For instance check out Brain Stormers Report and look at their top offenders list of 2010.

By the way:

Central Booking was AWESOME. Another organization run by a female, Maddy Rosenberg, that has a dual function within one space; the first "Devoted to all aspects of the medium of artist’s books, where all the work is on view, accessible and for sale" and the second "showcase an unusually broad variety of genres in a series of explorations of where art meets science."

Despite the heated discussion, our class had a lovely time with Anna Kunz. She is currently one of the artists at the The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation. Combining sculpture, painting, drawing and performance, Anna Kunz is nothing short of extraordinary. She really embraces performance and uses it through other tools, even when she paints. Her studio felt like one big interactive and organic painting. On one wall she had, what seemed like, the finger print of a wall painting. She had used a very thin layer of material that was large enough to cover an entire wall in her studio, and as a result would end up with two very separate things:

1. The remnants of a painting left on a wall. In essence, as if she were saying here is proof that an artist was here painting, here is proof that some artists are still painting.

2. The actual material she painted on, in which she used as a sculpture or installation or even hung over a window to let light shine through.

Personally, I have become very moved by her story. She left her family in Chicago to take advantage of being granted a studio in the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation. She keeps images of her family around her studio and I have always wondered, how do women balance making art, surviving, being a woman....and....raising children? Organization and sacrifice is a must. To what extent however?

I just HAD to ask Anna about her life as a mother. And in her eyes I could see that it truly pains her to have left her family. Yes, being granted a studio in this building is amazing. The foundation was started by a woman who had the money to invest in artists, which was one of the topics that were discussed earlier in the day. The amount of women who run Fortune 500 companies is perhaps 10%. Could this be part of the reason as to why less women are being represented in galleries and museums? What about the media? In Anna's case, she made the sacrifice and we all know it was worth it. Besides, her daughter should be very proud of her mother, she may be too young to understand now, but if my own mother took a risk to shake the art world as Anna has done, I would be forever proud and inspired to follow my own dreams.