Art by Women

I can understand that being politically correct has gone much too far, but as we know, the pendulum swings. After slavery and Jim Crow, the country as a whole knew things needed to change. Then came John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and most importantly, Martin Luther King, pushing the pendulum the other way. After another 40 years, people started to push back again in the opposite direction.

In the 1940’s and 1950’s, our housekeeper, who was also my nanny, was known as Negro. Then it was found better to change from a word derived from Spanish and Portuguese, to the English word Black! Then came other terms such as Afro-American, and then African American, and now “people of color”!

But there are so many other groups whose members have not been recognized for their abilities, and I am going to pick one for this Missive: female artists. I just checked and understand that women artists are the preferred term.

Included in a Missive I sent out in 2023 was this observance: NPR reported in 2020 that, “Art by women and men is valued differently. Fine arts by women, on average, are valued much less than men's pieces, and are routinely left out of major museums. The assumption that men are the artists and women are the models has been supported by the preponderance of nudes with female subjects depicted by male artists.”

In my Old Master world, an artist I particularly admire is Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1654). Her father, Orazio Gentileschi (1563–1639), was also an important artist at the time, and though they worked independently at times, they worked together. Later on, however, when art historians thought one painting “better” than the other, they immediately attributed it to Orazio.

Artemisia "Birth of John the Baptist"
The Prado, Madrid

Orazio "The Finding of Moses"
National Gallery, London

In 2019, Chad M. Topaz, co-founder of the Institute for the Quantitative Study of Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity, a professor of complex systems at Williams College, did a large research project with his colleagues showing how many male versus female artists were in major museums. They collected data on over 45,000 works by 10,000 artists from 18 major U.S. museums and found that 87% of those artists were men. By the way, they also found that 85% of those artists were white.

The prejudice against women in the arts is not new. Although the first woman was accepted into the French Royal Academy in 1663, the number was restricted to four. Anti-feminist attitudes have been even stronger in the United States. Although the 19th Amendment, allowing women to vote, was introduced in Congress in 1878, it was finally ratified only in 1920! Slowly but surely, things have been changing in all fields, if not fast enough. Women artists were not actually banned from museums, but were never found to be of equal importance to men. (Image Labille, Caption: Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (1749–1803), Metropolitan Museum, New York)

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (1749–1803)
Metropolitan Museum, New York

Even 20th-century women artists who are now celebrated, like Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keeffe, struggled for recognition over their careers. In the study of art history, a crusade begun 50 years ago by Linda Nochlin, and joined by other activist scholars, has broken the dam of prejudice. American institutions have recently focused on women artists and prioritized them in acquisitions. There have even been all-women artist exhibitions.

I have to admit, however, to a personal peeve. I believe art is art, and to separate the sexes or the ethnicities, for their own sake, makes no sense to me. When we go to a museum and see a work that interests us, do we need to read the label that emphasizes whether it was created by a man, a woman, a gay person, or someone of color? Of course, there are exceptions according to the context and subject matter, but should this be primary in our consideration of a work of art?

The Art Dealers’ Bad Rap

In 1974, the International Confederation of Art Dealers held an Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. This was an unprecedented event in this country since the art was on the secondary market and not contemporary. It is an amazing story, if I do say so myself, which you can read here, 

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2019/02/the-grand-gallery-revisited.html

I bring this up because I find it so surprising that my former profession, which I was very proud of, has had such a poor reputation. After all, how does art get into a museum? Either a curator purchases it from the market, or a collector donates it from their collection. That donor acquired it somewhere, most likely from a dealer, inheritance, or a purchase directly from the artist, being the exception.

Thinking about this issue, I guess it comes to the root of all evil – Money! As you probably have heard, “Money Makes the World Go Around” ... 

Some think the market is fixed because dealers don’t post prices. They assume that auctions are out in the open, but there, you do not know about hidden reserves, usually set by the owner, or at what figure a guarantee has been made by the auction house, usually backed by a would-be buyer. Not to mention fees and taxes. It is true that an art dealer can, in some sense, choose his client. When I was in business, I might have kept something for a curator or important collector if they had told me that I should find them a specific kind of artwork. Still, that work was acquired to sell, and unless there was a specific request to reserve something for a fixed amount of time, I wanted it paid for as quickly as possible so that I had the funds to buy more. This was true whether I owned the work or if I had it on consignment. Here is an image of the well-known art dealer Leo Castelli showing a picture to the artist Salvador Dali.

In the secondary art market, a trusted dealer may be sought for his discretion. Works change hands among collectors for various personal reasons, ranging from divorce, estates, or new ventures, which the collector may wish to keep private. One does not want to ask your friend or a member of your extended family to buy something directly from you. I remember when members of the Rothschild family found it unseemly to buy from each other. So, one Baron X might want Rosenberg & Stiebel to negotiate, or not, with Baron Y, whom Baron X knew wanted the work. In those cases, we did get an agreed-upon commission. All parties knew what the deal was.

In the contemporary art world, there are stereotypes: the starving artist, the scholarly museum curator, and the moneyed art dealer. No thought is given to the fact that the unknown artist would be given short shrift if he walked into the museum and tried to sell his work directly. If the curator had the time and inclination to even see the work and like it enough to show it to his Director, and if he could win his support, they would need to convince the Trustees that this was a worthy acquisition, even as a gift. It just does not happen.

The gallery has to “discover” the artist and try to convince private clients to buy. It may sound snobbish, but it is human nature not to want the risk of being “wrong” (there is no right or wrong when it comes to art), but there is a need to “look good” to fellow collectors.

I will leave you with this question: Is the art dealer or gallery a necessary evil, or are the dealers educators and explorers finding treasures and even discovering hidden treasures, i.e., works of art and artists, in the interests of collectors and museums?

Trump & The Arts

I never imagined I'd see what is now happening in this country. These are the darkest times I've experienced in my lifetime. We cannot escape it, but I try, particularly here, to stick to the arts. Even though I wrote on this subject last March, it has gotten so much worse.

Some time ago, Trump installed himself as President of the Kennedy Center, saying the programming was ideologically driven and too woke! He then put his cronies on the board, and they decided that only board members selected by the President could vote. He then had his name added to the title of this National Institution named in honor of a fallen President. Now, subject to his hand-picked board’s vote, the President, without consulting Congress, has decided to close the Kennedy Center down for two years for renovation. He posted “Financing is completed, and fully in place! This important decision, based on input from many Highly Respected Experts, will take a tired, broken, and dilapidated Center … and turn it into a World Class Bastion of Arts, Music, and Entertainment, far better than it has ever been before.” Another scary thought is that he has given no details about his mention of reconstruction. Do you think that this closure could also be due to the fact that many top artists have cancelled their programming at the Center, audiences have dwindled along with revenue, and most recently, the Washington National Orchestra decided to part ways with its home venue?

Recently, alarms were sounded in the arts community with the discovery that a federal building constructed in 1940 to house the Social Security Department was on the General Services Administration list for “accelerated disposal”. More than 1,800 feet of federally funded art commissions fill the building, inspiring a nickname among experts and enthusiasts: the “Sistine Chapel of the New Deal.” Ben Shahn and Philip Guston were among the artists hired as part of this project. Why did the current Administration focus on this building? One factor may be that Shan’s mural lining the central corridor illustrates the social ills in America that the new Social Security Administration was meant to address. The bill that approved this building for disposal was slipped through Congress, attached as an amendment to a water bill. With its desirable location across from the Mall, it is presumed that once sold, the building would be razed, fulfilling the cleansing of history with the destructive tactics the President favors.

Threats of the loss of funding are making museums do the government’s bidding. Under the Executive Order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” museums are being pressured to show only positive images of our country’s history, i.e. references to slavery and the mistreatment of Native Americans are not to be on view.

The Smithsonian has been told that Federal funds can only be used in compliance with the Executive Order to eliminate “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from the institution. Having submitted the Institution’s anniversary plans, the Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch was sent a letter from the White House saying that this “fell far short of what was requested” and what was to be sent for review were, “current wall texts and didactics, exhibition proposals and budgets, object checklists for upcoming programming, internal governance manuals, and chain of command records for content approval are not obscure archival requests”!!! The Smithsonian includes 20 museums, mostly in Washington, D.C. Two of them are the National Museum of the American Indian and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Do you think this administration might find any objectionable images there? (Image Objectionable Caption: Earle Richardson(1912-1935), Smithsonian American Art Museum)

    Earle Richardson (1912-1935),

Smithsonian American Art Museum

The art world is attempting to fight back. On Friday, January 30th, when people walked out of work, many art galleries around the country closed, including over 120 in New York. A number of museums also closed. A few examples are the Drawing Center and El Museo del Barrio in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena. The Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Wisconsin, and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art in Oregon. Needless to say, the Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Museum of Art were also closed. These were mostly contemporary museums since they are defending the rights of artists to express themselves freely. All institutions are being pressured to show art that one man thinks is appropriate, with censorship being the hallmark of authoritarianism.

I know I have only scratched the surface, mentioning just a small portion of what has happened to the arts in the last year, and I am afraid it won’t get better before it gets worse!

Gargoyles

As I searched for a subject for this missive, the sound of rapidly melting snow streaming to the ground from our flat roof brought to mind the function of gargoyles. The stone buildings of medieval times also needed roof drainage systems, and stonemasons incorporated the function in projecting animal and fantastical forms.

Today, most houses have gutters with drainage pipes. In Santa Fe, however, houses follow the tradition of the original Spanish colonial and Pueblo adobe architecture, run off from the flat roof is provided by canales (pronounced cah-NAH-lays). These were originally wooden channels, but today sometimes made with more durable materials that project through the parapets for drainage.

Gargoyles are often confused with grotesques; the latter were merely architectural decorations that had no function. It seems appropriate to the water-spitting monsters that the term gargoyle comes from the French word "gargouille," meaning throat or gullet. Aside from being functional, they also served as symbols to ward off evil spirits and provide spiritual guardianship for churches and cathedrals. Here is an image of gargoyles, by Carol Di Rienzo Cornwel, on Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

A recent Associated Press article by Peter Smith is devoted to the two-year restoration of the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption in Covington, Kentucky. It earned the nickname Notre Dame, for the Paris landmark that was the model for its exterior. There is one difference, however: despite the fact that locals feel their gargoyles have looked after them and kept away evil spirits, the Kentucky versions are not true gargoyles since they are purely decorative and don't drain water.

In Washington, D.C., however, the Washington National Cathedral—begun in 1907 and completed in 1990—has 112 functional gargoyles as well as over 3,000 grotesques. No wonder it took so long to build! President Theodore Roosevelt helped lay the first cornerstone, and President George H.W. Bush oversaw the laying of the final stone atop the towers.

Even without religious significance, there's something exciting about these monstrous figures, whether they are functioning gargoyles or merely decorative grotesques or chimeras. They continued to be used decoratively on buildings in the 19th century and even early 20th-century high-rises. They are very expensive to make or repair, as the continuous water flow can make them structurally unstable, and they have even been known to fall due to deterioration from weathering. Of course, they make no sense on tall glass buildings or buildings of contemporary design.

Allow me to finish with a mansion in New York where the decorative “gargoyles” failed in keeping evil away … the one that belonged to Jeffrey Epstein!

A Major Art Loan Questioned

A few years ago, I wrote a Missive on a newly discovered fragment of the Bayeux Tapestry, the 230-foot embroidery illustrating the Battle of Hastings of 1066 when William the Conqueror defeated Harold Godwinson to become the first Norman King of England.

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2025/04/will-bayeux-tapestry-get-longer.html

There have been discussions since 1953 about lending this important work of art from its museum home in Bayeux, Normandy, for an exhibition in England, where it was created. President Emmanuel Macron announced the latest plan in 2018 since the Bayeux Museum required renovations.

According to the Smithsonian Magazine, in 2022 the cultural authorities of Normandy commissioned three scholars to study the feasibility of moving the tapestry. While the scholars remain unnamed and their report kept confidential, it was declared that the report “does not state that this tapestry is untransportable”! Six months ago, it was announced as a fait accompli that the British Museum would have the exhibition of the century with the tapestry on view for 10 months.

How do you value an irreplaceable work of art that is an important part of the history of two countries? It was decided that eight hundred million pounds or 1.1 billion dollars would be covered by England’s Government Indemnity Scheme, i.e., the British Treasury, and would be sufficient. I am sure that the highest recorded sale of a work of art, Leonardo’s “Salvator Mundi”, sold for over $450 million dollars, came into the calculation. To whom would it be paid in the event, and what would be done with the money then? Now that is an interesting hypothetical.

Still, there is no way of ensuring the priceless adequately. I can imagine that some would say why bother insuring it at all? One consideration is that when you put a high monetary value on anything, more thought and care are taken with that object. Of course, it would be a political disaster to tell the public it had no value.

The issue comes down to why take the risk of lending it? Those defending the decision say it had to be moved in any case for the construction of a new state-of-the-art installation in Normandy, and it is already in storage, so why not put it on view where it would gain incredible publicity not only for the British Museum but more importantly for the work of art itself? When it came back home, it would be sure to bring many more visitors to the new Bayeux Museum.

The best way to bring wide attention to a matter is if a celebrity, not a scholar or politician, is willing to raise their voice in support or opposition to an idea. In this case, the pre-eminent British artist, David Hockney, has done so. He wrote an op-ed in The Independent, UK, stating his opposition to moving the tapestry. Hockney now lives in Normandy and has visited the Bayeux Tapestry more than 20 times in the last 3 years. He has declared it “madness” to have it travel.

Hockney suggests that a replica would tell the story just as well. Rather than my quoting what he wrote, I will let you read it for yourselves. There is also an amusing video by President Macron regarding the loan. 

https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/art/features/bayeux-tapestry-david-hockney-british-museum-b2899775.html

I am always of two minds regarding loans. I was not happy when the Metropolitan Museum did not lend its two Vermeers to the Vermeer exhibition three years ago due to the donor’s stipulation. It would have put all the known Vermeers together to get a complete view of his work. On the other hand, what if there had been a fire at the Rijksmuseum and the totality of the artist’s work were lost?

I write my Missives for a number of reasons, but most importantly to my mind, is to get my readers to think about an issue in a new way… or just to think about the issue in the first place. So, make up your own mind about this loan, though you probably won’t be able to change anything more than David Hockney can.

Fame’s Uncertain Path

Following up on "Artistic Self-Promotion," what about those artists who were dissed in their own time, only to find appreciation and fame after they were no longer there to enjoy it? Then there were famous and respected artists, who made little money and may have been known only locally when they were alive. They became lost to history, only to be rediscovered centuries later.

The one always mentioned first is Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). He was clearly unstable from the beginning. In his few productive years, however, he produced over 850 paintings. He sold only one painting during his lifetime at a fair in Brussels in 1890: "The Red Vineyard" (1888), now in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. That same year, he committed suicide at the age of 37.

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1654), the daughter of Orazio Gentileschi (1563-1639), was already producing paintings of interest by the age of 15. Her "Susanna and the Elders," painted at the age of 17, is today in the Schönborn Collection, Pommersfelden, Germany. She even became a court painter under the patronage of the Medici. Shortly after her death, however, her reputation suffered from attributions of her work to her father—probably, partly because that is where her inspiration came from, but even more from misogyny and the belief that a woman could not equal a man's achievements. I can remember that in the middle of the last century, I began to hear more and more about her, mostly due to feminist art historians, but backed by evidence of the great paintings that Artemisia actually produced.

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) had moderate success and indeed respect locally in Delft during his lifetime. He also had a few wealthy patrons. He made his living, however, as an art dealer. When he died suddenly, he left his family in debt. It did not help that while van Gogh produced arguably more than 850 paintings in his brief career, Vermeer produced only around 35 in his entire lifetime. Acknowledgment of him as a great artist had to wait until the mid-19th century.

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), called today "The Father of Modern Art," was initially ridiculed and rejected from the Salon, with critics calling his work ugly. Change is always rejected at first. I believe that people enjoy their comfort zone and don't want it disturbed. They are also scared of what the repercussions might be—but that is a subject for another time. Cézanne represented the link between Impressionism and what we call modern art. He became a great influence on Braque and Picasso in their development of the Cubist movement. In the same period, Claude Monet (1840-1926) struggled with critics, who thought his impressionist paintings were strange and unfinished. Did it represent progress or just change?

I will end this missive with a favorite artist of mine, Salvador Dalí (1904-1989). A contemporary of Picasso, Pollock, and Mondrian, he is known best as the iconic figure of Surrealism. The movement, however, was started by the writer, poet, and theorist André Breton. Dalí joined the group in 1929 only to be thrown out by Breton in 1939. According to an Art Net article, Breton found him “too flamboyant, too political, and too fond of money”!

I think this brings my missives of the last two weeks full circle. Dalí is an artist who was thrown out of the very movement with which he is so identified because of his self-promotion.

Artistic Self-Promotion

People say a lot of things about the art world without really thinking them through. You've heard them: "My kid could do that" about abstract expressionism. "Art dealers only care about money." "Museums are above all that—they're educational institutions, not businesses." However, without the economic relationship between art and money, artists would starve, dealers and auction houses wouldn't exist. Museums would have to close their doors.

Nobody knows exactly how many artists worked in the 17th century in Europe, though I've seen estimates ranging from 20,000 to 50,000. Today there are probably 500 times that many. These numbers are rough at best, but here's one that caught my attention: apparently only 10,000 individual artists are represented in museums worldwide. That seems low to me ... add a zero or two and it's still nowhere near all the people who call themselves professional artists.

So why are certain artists collected by museums and not others? Yes, galleries promote specific artists ... that's not untrue. But how were those artists chosen in the first place? And why did institutions acquire their work after sifting through all those thousands of other artists?

I'd argue that self-promotion by the artists themselves plays a huge role, and this isn't some new concept. From the Renaissance on, European artists put their own faces in paintings and sculptures to get noticed. Even in commissioned works, an artist would sneak his likeness in there to satisfy his ego, or advertise his prowess showing that some important patron thought he was good enough for the commission.

Take Giotto di Bondone (?-1337). He is believed to have painted himself into The Last Judgement fresco (around 1305) in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. Sure, the donor Enrico Scrovegni is front and center, kneeling at the bottom. But scholars think Giotto slipped his own face in among the saved souls.

Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) a painter, draughtsman and engraver, was versatile in his subject matter doing portraits, nature, animals and religious subjects demonstrating his abilities to a wide variety of patrons. He took commissions from royalty, the gentry, as well as the Church. His woodcuts and engravings, that even appeared in book form, won him recognition far and wide. Dürer started early using his own image. Here is a silver-point drawing in the Albertina, Vienna which he produced at the age of 13!

And then there's Rembrandt (1606-1669), who wasn't subtle about it at all. He depicted himself in drawings, paintings, and etchings 80 times. He documented his entire life—from when he was young and ambitious right through to old age. Talk about advertising your skills by creating your own visual autobiography! This 1633 engraving exists in a number of museum collections and the painting is in The National Gallery, London, one of 3 self-portraits he did the last year of his life.

Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was the master of self-promotion. He's the one who coined "15 minutes of fame." He grabbed every media opportunity, showed up at every important art event, and made sure he was seen everywhere in the art world.

My wife often tells this story: In 1977, as a Met curator, she introduced Dale Chihuly, who's hugely famous today but wasn't yet, to Henry Gelzahler, the head of the Museum’s Department of Twentieth Century Art and a central figure in the contemporary art scene and urged him to acquire examples of Chihuly’s glasswork. Geldzahler acquired two cylinders, which became the first Chihuly works to enter the permanent collection of a major museum. As Chihuly was leaving his office, Geldzahler offered him a piece of advice “Young man, focus more on your work and less on self-promotion.” Geldzahler got that one wrong!

Today, with social media, artists have so many more ways to promote themselves. The tools have changed, but the basic truth hasn't… talent alone has never been enough.