“Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?” the feminist art collective Guerrilla Girls asked in their famous 1989 poster. It pointed out that fewer than 5% of the artists in the modern art sections were women, but 85% of the nudes were female. They could have asked the same question of any major art gallery in the world. Four decades later, this year’s biggest UK exhibitions finally show a different picture.
Dame Tracey Emin might be naked in many of her self-portraits, but that isn’t what got her into Tate Modern for a landmark retrospective. Rose Wylie, 91, is the first female painter to have a solo exhibition at the Royal Academy. The Colombian artist Beatriz González (who died, aged 93, in January) is at the Barbican. And that is just this week’s openings.
