The statistics are shocking. In 2019, a study published in the journal Plos One found that in the collections of 18 major US museums, 87% of artworks were by men and 85% by white artists. In 2022, the Burns Halperin report found that in the acquisitions made at 31 prominent US museums between 2008 and 2020, 11% were by female-identifying artists, while just 0.5% were by Black American women. One institution, however, is the exception: the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington DC, which last month reopened after more than two years.
The museum was founded by Wilhelmina Cole Holladay who, while travelling around Europe in the 1970s, had a lightbulb moment. She discovered the work of Clara Peeters, a Flemish painter working at the start of the 17th century. Peeters painted still lifes – a genre typical for western women at the time as they were denied the sort of education that would have helped them create large-scale paintings of historic scenes. Still life was also easily achievable in the home. Peeters had a knack for meticulously rendered pictures of flowers, shells, ceramics and more, but she went one step further. Look closely at the reflections in her goblets in the 1612 work Still Life with Flowers, Gilt Goblets, Coins and Shells and you will see a flurry of minuscule self-portraits.
