Last week, Tate Britain unveiled a complete rehang of its collection, the first time in a decade that the institution has displayed its treasures anew. The focus? Women. “Women artists will be better represented than ever before,” its announcement read. “Half the contemporary artists on display will be women.” Progress, you might think, but how has it taken until 2023 for women to be given such space in one of Britain’s most beloved and respected museums?
In historical terms, it’s partly because society hasn’t presented us with a vision in which women own certain spaces. Take a portrait commissioned to show the 36 founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, of whom two were women, Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser. Instead of painting them alongside the men who were all decked out in suits and studying a nude model, the painter Johann Zoffany reduced them to two almost unrecognisable portrait busts in the corner of the room. (The Royal Academy did not admit women to the life-drawing studio until the 1890s.)
