"Makeover" by Melissa Cooke Benson
If asked to name a female artist, some might think of Georgia O’Keeffe, the Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, native married to noted photographer Alfred Stieglitz who gained fame for her paintings of the southwest, particularly New Mexico.
Others may think of Frida Kahlo, the Mexican painter and political activist who dabbled in magic realism, portraiture and folk art, and was married to fellow artist and activist Diego Rivera.
But what about American Impressionist Mary Cassatt or Swedish painter and mystic Hilma af Klint, a preeminent pioneer of abstract art? What about Augusta Savage, a Black sculptor associated with the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, or feminist artist Judy Chicago, known for her inventive, large-scale installations?
Few of those names are familiar to even the most ardent gallery-goers because the international art world is seen largely through the lens of male artists. That’s a view Laurie Winters, executive director of the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend, is intent on changing through the museum’s newest exhibit “Claiming Space: A New Generation of Visionary Women.”
Wisconsin Ties
The exhibit, which runs July 24 through Oct. 3, features the work of 28 contemporary women artists with Wisconsin ties, 24 of whom are from Milwaukee. It’s a central part of MOWA’s 60th anniversary celebration and in homage to Melitta Hedwig Suder-Pick, who founded what then was known as the West Bend Gallery of Fine Arts to provide a home for the artworks of her uncle Carl von Marr.
The gallery started acquiring more works by Wisconsin artists, eventually outgrowing several earlier spaces before being renamed MOWA and moving to its current facility in 2013. In 2019, the museum’s footprint broadened to include Milwaukee gallery space at Saint Kate—The Arts Hotel and St. John’s On The Lake retirement living center.
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Broader Place in the Art World
“Claiming Space”, the exhibit’s title, refers to an effort by the museum and women artists to find a broader place in the art world’s limelight, Winters says. To date too many artists have been overlooked, apparently because of their gender.
“Only about 8 percent of the artworks on display in museums and galleries across the United States are by women artists,” Winters notes. “MOWA is at 19 percent, but that is still shamefully low. Our emphasis for the 21st Century will be to change those numbers.”
MOWA currently house more than 5,000 individual pieces of art in its collection by 450 Wisconsin artists. Of that number only 70 are women artists.
The artists featured in the “Claiming Space” exhibition work in a variety of media and tend to be more experimental in their choices than many of their male counterparts, Winters explains. Themes include motherhood, the body, hair, daily routines, and the otherworldly side of femininity. In addition to painting, sculpture and even a collection of brightly colored wigs, the exhibition’s 65 works offer some new and innovative approaches, several of which resonated with Winters.
Issues of Identity
“Valaria Tatera, a Native American artist, created a work of 600 brightly colored ribbons hung from the ceiling to commemorate Native Americans’ struggles for identity,” Winters says. “Her grandfather attended one of the Indian schools in Wisconsin and the installation is in honor of him.”
Niki Johnson’s “Fitting In with the Squares (Self Portrait)” depicts the artist’s torso and is comprised of hundreds of broken pieces of decorative plates depicting artist Norman Rockwell’s work.
“We also see a lot of works inspired by fairy tales, especially among young women artists, that deal with images to which women are told to aspire,” she adds.
The variety of themes and media should be of interest to all museumgoers, Winters says, showing what the public may have been missing by not recognizing the work of women artists earlier.
“I hope visitors first and foremost enjoy he work,” Winters says, “but the bigger issues we should be thinking about is finding greater equity in museum approaches to collecting works, and how to give women artists greater voice as we move ahead in the 21st century.”
For more, visit wisconsinart.org.
Milwaukee Artists Featured in Claiming Space Emily Belknap Lois Bielefeld Demitra Copoulos Michelle Grabner Niki Johnson Sharon Kerry-Harlan Anne Kingsbury Gina Litherland Lindsay Lochmann & Barbara Ciurej Ashley Lusietto Melissa Mursch-RodriguezRosemary Ollison Masako Onodera Jean Roberts-Guequierre Lauren Semivan Alix Shaw LaNia Sproles Claire Stigliani Valaria Tatera Ariana Vaeth Della Wells Jenny Jo Wennlund Dyani White Hawk
