Famous women artists take center stage at the BMA. One of them is Georgia O’Keeffe, a renowned painter who painted flowers and skulls throughout her career.  Pink Tulip, an oil on canvas painting measuring 36 x 30 inches, showing the dexterity of the artist is on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art as part of its 2020 Vision initiative featuring exhibitions and programs dedicated solely to female artists. Image courtesy of the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Women artists take center stage at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The museum has dedicated 2020 to celebrating women artists, their work, and their contribution to art history. Additionally, the museum will only collect works by female artists.

BY KAZEEM ADELEKE

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND–The opening of By Their Creative Force: American Women Modernists to the public in October marks the beginning of the Baltimore Museum of Art’s “2020 Vision,” an initiative wholly devoted to bringing attention to women artists, their works, and their contributions to art history.   The plan honors the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage and highlights the contributions of women in all areas of human endeavor, especially art.

For this unprecedented celebration of female artists, the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) has lined up 13 solo exhibitions. There are also seven thematic shows highlighting the creativity and contributions of female artists to art history and the global art discourse. One of them is By Their Creative Force: American Women Modernists. The show brings together works by major female artists who were influenced and engaged in major 20^th Century movements such as Cubism and Abstract Expressionism.

Included in the show are Elizabeth Catlett, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Maria Martinez. There is also Amalie Rothschild, a famous female artists well known for their outstanding creative prowess. The exhibition features paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts that have continued to enthrall art lovers since it opened.  Other artists in the show include Simone Brangier Boas, Grace Hartigan, Elsa Hutzler and Helen Jacobson. Amalie Rothschild and Grace Turnbull who were based in Baltimore during their artistic careers are also in the show. By Their Creative Force is on view through July 5, 2020.

Famous Women Artists Take Center Stage at the BMA

Close to By Their Creative Force: American Women Modernists is A Moment of Pleasure, an immersive two-story site-specific installation by Mickalene Thomas. Thomas is a visual artist best known for her paintings composed of rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel. In the museum’s East Lobby, the installation turns this area of the museum into a fully furnished living room. Opened to the public in November, the installation reflects Thomas’ signature aesthetic influenced by the 1970s and 1980s motifs. The expansive installation includes prints, wallpaper, and furnishing by Mickalene Thomas for the BMA’s inaugural Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker Biennial Commission. A Moment of Pleasure is on view through May 5, 2021.

Women Behaving Badly: Heroines and Witches

By Their Creative Force: American Women Modernists and A Moment of Pleasure are just two of the exhibitions celebrating female artists at the BMA as part of its “2020 Vision”.  Through the 2020 art season, the museum will host solo shows for Ellen Lesperance, Sharon Lockhart, Ana Mendieta, Howardena Pindell, Tschabalala Self, and Lisa Yuskavage. 

Other shows art lovers should look forward to in 2020 include a seminal exhibition of American Indian beadworks that incorporate patriotic iconography made by 19th-century Lakota women. There is also Women Behaving Badly, a show that examines the visual representation of female power and protest in European and American art. The works on display reveal the perception of women who rebelled against the traditional roles of wife and mother. They are represented as biblical heroines, witches, nymphs, and actresses.  The show will open in the summer of 2020.  A show exploring social political video works by Candice Breitz is another show expected to generate attention for the year of female artists at the BMA.

Joan Mitchell: A Blockbuster Retrospective

Other major highlights for the “2020 Vision” include African Art and the Matrilineage, a show documenting the role of maternal power in African art from the 19th through the mid-20th centuries. The retrospective of works by Joan Mitchell, sourced from both public and private collections is expected to be a blockbuster show. An abstract expressionist and printmaker, Joan Mitchell was one of the few female artists of her era to gain critical acclaim from her peers, including men. Her works are in museums across the globe.  Adding to all the star-studded shows slated for 2020 are several solo art exhibitions by artists Ana Mendieta, Lisa Yuskavage, and Hartigan that will be in galleries in the museum’s contemporary wing.

Baltimore Museum of Art’s 2020 Initiative Gives Credence to Women Artists

The Baltimore Museum of Art’s 2020 initiative draws a line from the 1960s when female artists fought for recognition from museums and the patriarchal art environment to the present. It gives historical context to a struggle that is often overlooked by male-centered art historians. The BMA 2020 Vision also highlights the disparity in race and gender in art history. 

There is a centering of drowned voices of exceptional female artists in the Baltimore Museum of Art‘s 2020 Vision. Christopher Bedford, the museum’s director puts it succinctly when he says the “initiative serves to recognize the voices, narratives, and creative innovations of a range of extraordinarily talented women artists.”  The hope is that this groundbreaking effort will achieve its goal, which according to Bedford, “is to rebalance the scales and to acknowledge the ways in which women’s contributions still do not receive the scholarly examination, dialogue, and public acclaim that they deserve.”

Beyond expanding its presentation of female artists and artists of color, the BMA vision for 2020 is also an opportunity to celebrate the struggle of women through the ages. In particular, the historic passing of the 19th Amendment guaranteed women in the United States the right to vote.

Centennial of Women’s Suffrage: Women Artists Take Center Stage

The upcoming centennial of women’s suffrage provided the platform for the museum to transition women artists who have resided on the periphery of art history for many years to the center.

“The goal for this effort is to rebalance the scales and to acknowledge the ways in which women’s contributions still do not receive the scholarly examination, dialogue and public acclaim that they deserve.” — Christopher Bedford, the Baltimore Museum of Art’s director.

This is a bold step by the BMA to shift the persistent trend that continues to privilege male artists over female artists in museum collections. A recent survey of museums across the country found that despite the desire to elevate the work of women artists, many museum administrators have continued to drag their feet.  Art institutions continue to focus on the promotion of male artists and adding their works to their collections despite the outcry for them to change the canon.  Based on the example of the BMA, the insertion of works by female artists into museum permanent collections rests not just with curators who must rethink their curatorial strategies but also with those who decide on art acquisitions.

With this new initiative aimed at re-correcting the canon that perpetually situates women artists in the periphery of art history, the BMA has put other museums on the spot. Although many museums across the country are preparing to commemorate the 100th anniversary next year of the ramification of the 19th amendment that guaranteed women in the United States the right to vote, none has endeavored to follow in the BMA’s footsteps.   BMA’s sweeping changes to its programming and art collection are a comprehensive bold statement that will hopefully draw others along. 

BMA Will Only Acquire Works by Women Artists in 2020.

The Baltimore Museum of Art’s “2020 Vision” contests the art historical narrative that relegated female artists to the margins. An indication of the museum’s effort to right many years of wrongs against female artists and to diversify its collection began early this year when it acquired a slew of works by women and artists of color. To raise funds for the acquisition of these works, the museum deaccessioned works by artists the museum believed to be over-represented in its collection.

In June, the museum acquired more than 70 works by Charles Gaines, Emma Amos, Faith Ringgold, and Ana Mendieta, among other artists. Of the 70 new works acquired by the museum, seventeen of them were purchased with profits from seven recently deaccessioned works, which were sold as part of the museum’s desire to create diversity within its collection.  

“With this new initiative aimed at re-correcting the canon that perpetually situates women artists in the periphery of art history, BMA has put other museums on the spot.”

Some of the important works in the new acquisitions include Gaines’s mixed media Numbers and Trees, Tiergarten Series 3 (2018), which includes photographs and diagrams of trees in Berlin’s Tiergarten park; Mendieta’s film Blood Inside Outside (1975), the first work by the artist to enter the BMA’s collection; prints by Geta Brătescu; and André Derain’s painting Paysage de Provence (Le Petit Pont), 1930–31.

More Works by Women Artists Enter BMA’s Permanent Collection

Additionally, works by Ebony G. Patterson, Manuel Orazi, Édouard Vuillard, Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Elle Pérez, Wilmer Wilson IV, Jack Whitten, Wangechi Mutu, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, and Amy Sherald, who painted Michelle Obama’s official portrait and others were also added to the museum’s permanent holdings. Some of the works bought with the fund generated from the deaccessioned artworks are part of the 2020 exhibitions.

The deaccessioned works were sold at Sotheby’s in New York in May 2018. The list included Oxidation Painting by Andy Warhol, which went for $3.4 million, and a Franz Kline abstraction, which sold for $5.2 million. These pieces were the most expensive in the group.  

As expected, the museum came under intense criticism for selling off seven post-war works by celebrated blue chip white male artists like Andy Warhol and Franz Kline.

The Baltimore Sun, in an op-ed, describes the deaccessioning as a “horrendous decision.”  However, many people supported the sale and agreed that it complied with the guidelines established by the American Alliance of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors.

BMA Remains Focused Despite Intense Criticisms

Despite all the criticisms that came with the sale, the museum remained focused and determined on its desire to diversify its holdings:

“These historic and contemporary works create new opportunities to tell important and relevant narratives about the development of art and culture, and represent our collective goal to capture the innovations of a broad spectrum of artists with a continued and particular emphasis on those that have previously been under-represented in institutional collections,” noted Christopher Bedford, director of the BMA.

Not surprising, the museum is determined to reshape its collection. In addition to all the shows and activities lined up for 2020, the BMA will only acquire works by female artists. This applies to both works purchased by the museum and works donated to it.   

The BMA’s focus on female artists creates space for the works of exceptional female artists who deserve adequate recognition in art history.  But more importantly, it inspires younger female artists to create art.  In a profession where women continue to be highly marginalized in museums, it is not surprising that women are honoring BMA for establishing a platform to celebrate women artists. Bianca Kovic, the incoming executive director of the National Association of Women Artists is also ecstatic that recognition is finally coming to female artists who continue to struggle for recognition. According to her, of the 95,000 artworks in the BMA’s collection, 3,800 were created by 1,500 women artists. Without a doubt, the Baltimore Museum of Art’s 2020 Vision brings attention to not just the brilliance of female artists but also helps educate the public on the importance of women in American art history

Great women artists take center stage as the Baltimore Museum of Art celebrates their immense contribution to art.  With this 2020 vision, the museum has taken a bold step to give female artists who have resided in the margins for years a place at the center. What do you think about this idea?