By Hilarie M Sheets
At the peak of her career in 1976, Georgia O’Keeffe refused to lend her work to a pivotal exhibition in Los Angeles, “Women Artists: 1550 to 1950.” It was one of a wave of all-female shows — some 150 — that decade to spotlight artists largely ignored by major museums and galleries. But O’Keeffe, the most famous female artist of her day, saw herself in a different category — “one of the best painters,” period.
The feminist art historian Linda Nochlin borrowed an O’Keeffe painting elsewhere and put her in the show anyway. Yet despite these exhibitions, neither O’Keeffe nor any other woman would break into “Janson’s History of Art,” the leading textbook, until 1987, and equality remained elusive.
While some artists are ambivalent about being viewed through the lens of gender, the all-women’s group show, which fell out of favor in the ’80s and ’90s, is flourishing again. At least a dozen galleries and museums are featuring women-themed surveys, a surge curators and gallerists say is shining a light on neglected artists, resuscitating some careers and raising the commercial potential of others.
The most prominent spring show is “Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women” at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel, the inaugural exhibition of the gallery’s new Los Angeles branch. It joins an all-women lineup at the Saatchi Gallery in London and at the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, where Mera Rubell, its co-founder, has seen a 20 percent spike in attendance over last year and enthusiasm from families bringing their daughters to see the show, “No Man’s Land.”
On the horizon are women-only group shows at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and Denver Art Museum, and corporate sponsors are starting to get into the act: The New Museum in New York was approached by the DKNY fashion house to underwrite its spring season, devoted to five solo exhibitions by women artists.
The most prominent spring show is “Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women” at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel, the inaugural exhibition of the gallery’s new Los Angeles branch. It joins an all-women lineup at the Saatchi Gallery in London and at the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, where Mera Rubell, its co-founder, has seen a 20 percent spike in attendance over last year and enthusiasm from families bringing their daughters to see the show, “No Man’s Land.”
On the horizon are women-only group shows at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and Denver Art Museum, and corporate sponsors are starting to get into the act: The New Museum in New York was approached by the DKNY fashion house to underwrite its spring season, devoted to five solo exhibitions by women artists.
“They are curatorial correctives,” said Maura Reilly, the founding curator of the Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum and now interim director of the National Academy Museum, who advocates for all-women exhibitions “to counterpoint the looked-overness.”
The historical exhibitions have revived careers, helping women artists take their place within the context of larger movements. To counter the “male-centric view of what Abstract Expressionism is,” Gwen Chanzit, the curator of modern art at the Denver Art Museum, said she discovered a cache of women artists who had exhibited in major shows during the 1950s. Starting on June 12, “Women of Abstract Expressionism” will spotlight virtual unknowns like Judith Godwin and Perle Fine, alongside the handful who broke through, including Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler. Ms. Chanzit’s research convinced the museum to acquire seven canvases in the show.
Ms. Godwin, 85, one of three living artists in the exhibition, said of the attention, “I never thought it was going to happen,” adding she had no qualms about being included in a “women’s show.”
“I had so many guys tell me in the ’50s that women just could not paint,” she said.
Ms. Godwin’s auction record is $26,000, set in 2006. The auction high for her friend Franz Kline topped $40 million in 2012.
“I am a woman and I’ve always struggled in that capacity. I don’t want to deny it,” she said. “I’m honored to be in any show — especially a show of women.”
