Five big museums, including Tate Britain and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, are launching audio guides dedicated to underserved female artists in their collection during Women’s History Month.
Museums Without Men, devised by the Guardian art critic Katy Hessel, will showcase dozens of female and gender non-conforming artists who at present are often in the shadow of their male contemporaries.
“I’ve always gone to museums and hunted out female artists,” said Hessel, who was shocked at how few female artists were on the walls and is the author of the Story of Art Without Men.
She would notice that the female artists who were on display in museums always had labels next to their work that mentioned male artists they had worked with or were inspired by to contextualise them.
“I couldn’t really believe it. None of the male artists had female names on them. We should talk about artists as artists not as ‘the wife of’, ‘the muse of’, or ‘the daughter of’,” said Hessel.
The guides will be available on the websites of museums participating in Women’s History Month and on Hessel’s website, and offer insight into female artists such as Bisa Butler, Wangechi Mutu and Lucie Rie.
When people arrive at the institutions the guides will give them context about the artist, their life and work, and explain where the work is situated in the space.
“There are so many amazing stories: at the Met Rosa Bonheur has a painting called The Horse Fair, which is in a room of female nudes painted at the same time,” said Hessel.
“But the reasons she hasn’t painted nudes was because she wasn’t allowed access; animals were accessible but she had to get a permit from the French government to wear trousers and go to this horse fair.
“The tour gives you insight into what women were going through at the time. There are so many layers upon layers in these stories.”
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Met in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC, the Hepworth Wakefield in West Yorkshire and the Tate Britain in London are all taking part in the project during March. “It’s about alerting people to these fantastic works that are on display and might be missed otherwise,” said Hessel.
Hessel discusses a maximum of a dozen works in each museum, which she believes will not overwhelm visitors. “Let’s just concentrate on 10 works that might really interest you,” she said.
Olivia Colling, the deputy director of Hepworth Wakefield, said: “Since the earliest days of the Hepworth Wakefield, we have championed women artists in our exhibition programme and think Katy’s audio guide is a great way to further engage global audiences with 10 key works in our collection by artists such as Barbara Hepworth, Jadé Fadojutimi and Lucie Rie.”
Hessel sees the audio guides as a step towards opening up museum collections, which are still overwhelmingly dominated by white male artists, to other groups. Researchers who looked at 18 US art museums in 2019 found their collections were 87% male and 85% white.
She said: “It’s to make people aware of the imbalance and to say, OK let’s have a look at the women in this collection, and if its a deafening imbalance we’ve got to do better and maybe it’ll encourage people to do better. It’s about celebrating these works and encouraging people of all backgrounds to come to museums. That’s the aim.”
