The Baltimore Museum of Art devotes a year to women artists
The museum’s 12-month long 2020 Vision initiative will attempt to redress gender imbalance in the art world
The Baltimore Museum of Art has many important works by Henri Matisse, Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso in its permanent collection. However, paintings by those big, dead, male artists ended up in the museum’s trove thanks to two shrewd female collectors, Claribel Cone and Etta Cone, whose Cone Collection provided the BMA with many of its finest works.
This autumn, to mark the 100th anniversary of female suffrage in the United States, the museum will celebrate female collectors such as the Cones, as well as prominent women artists, with a series of 20 exhibitions.
The series, called 2020 Vision, will begin with By Their Creative Force: American Women Modernists, focusing on the work of Georgia O’Keeffe, Maria Martinez, Grace Hartigan among others; it will also feature a new, living-room-like installation in the museum’s East Lobby courtesy of the contemporary American artist Mickalene Thomas; as well as solo shows by Candice Breitz, Tschabalala Self, Ana Mendieta and Lisa Yuskavage and others.
“The BMA’s 2020 Vision initiative serves to recognize the voices, narratives, and creative innovations of a range of extraordinarily talented women artists. 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,” said Christopher Bedford, BMA Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director. “This vision and goal are especially appropriate, given the central role women have played in shaping this museum throughout its history.”
Can’t make it to the BMA? Then take a look at Great Women Artists; it features many of the artists in 2020 Vision and is the most extensive fully illustrated book of women artists ever published.