Women artists are still shockingly underrepresented in galleries and museums, with a recent study revealing that only 27% of the 590 solo shows that took place at major American art institutions between 2007 and 2013 were devoted to women. But achieving artistic gender parity isn’t just about doubling this percentage. Feminist artists are still getting banned from Instagram and arrested in both the US and abroad, and even the wealthiest women artists would likely be far richer if they were men. Elizabeth Sackler of the eponymous feminist art museum at the Brooklyn Museum addressed this when introducing the feminist art incubator 10 years ago: “We will not have reached a post-feminist era until all women — women of color, disenfranchised women living in poverty and subjected to injustices, women abused or discarded — are saved from bigotry, are rescued from the horrors of rape and the sex-slave market, and at last have equal opportunities,” she said.
This year the Sackler Center celebrates 10 years of fighting for social change, and to toast the occasion, the Brooklyn Museum has announced a very promising year-long series of feminist exhibitions and events. A Year of Yes: Reimagining Feminism at the Brooklyn Museum “presents a multiplicity of voices from the history of feminism and feminist art while also showcasing contemporary artistic practices and new thought leadership,” say the curators. “The project recognizes feminism as a driving force for progressive change and takes the transformative contributions of feminist art during the last half-century as its starting point. [It] then reimagines the next steps, expanding feminist thinking from its roots in the struggle for gender parity to embrace broader social-justice issues of tolerance, inclusion, and diversity.”
The artist lineup is testament to the Sackler Center’s commitment to its lofty goal. Marilyn Minter’s deliciously gaudy Pretty/Dirty series will be shown alongside Georgia O’Keefe’s Living Modern, Beverly Buchanan’s interactive sculpture project Ruins and Rituals, and a show honoring the radical black women of 1965-85. In early December, A Woman’s Afterlife will look at gender transformation in Ancient Egypt. And from November through to March next year, an exhibition called Iggy Pop Life Class will exhibit 22 NSFW sketches of a naked Iggy Pop — which were drawn back in February when the punk rock provocateur rolled up to Jeremy Deller’s life drawing class at New York Academy of Art. The drawings of Iggy, who challenged gender and sexuality tropes with his wild stage antics in the early 60s, invite comparison with the Brooklyn Museum’s more historical depictions of masculinity on view.
“A Year of Yes: Reimagining Feminism at the Brooklyn Museum” runs from October 21, 2016 through October 22, 2017.
Related: The rebel feminist artists of the 70s, uncensored
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Text Hannah Ongley
Image via Instagram