'It's growing by the day': behind the push for more all-female exhibitions

In 1985, the feminist art collective the Guerrilla Girls asked on a public billboard: “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?”

They are still asking. When the group revisited the artwork last, in 2012, only 4% of artists in the Met’s modern art wing were women, with 76% of the nudes still female.

But there could be a significant shift next year, when a string of all-female exhibitions take over US museums ahead of the 2020 presidential elections. From September to November, more than 60 museums and institutions will host exhibitions as part of a nationwide project spearheaded by the Feminist Art Coalition (FAC), aiming “to generate cultural awareness of feminist thought, experience, and action”.

Related: Only 2% of global art auction spending is on work by women, study finds

“We are a platform for art projects informed by feminism,” says Apsara DiQuinzio, one of the organizers, who works as a curator at the Berkley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. “The goal is to shed a light on feminist issues, to spark public dialogue and to inspire engagement leading into the next presidential election.”

Initially, only 52 museums and art institutions were involved, but since launching their website last week, organizers have been flooded with emails from spaces asking to participate.

The interest from museums across the country keeps trickling in, says DiQuinzio, who just added an additional 10 or so institutions to the lineup of participating venues, including the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St Louis and The Shed, a recently opened space in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards.

“It’s growing by the day. It’s what I hoped would happen,” she says.

The Brooklyn Museumwill feature a retrospective of the Boston-born feminist performance artist Lorraine O’Grady next fall, while the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston will showcase the first museum survey dedicated to the Brooklyn photographer Deana Lawson.

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles will have a survey of the Iranian political painter Tala Madani, while the Pérez Art Museum Miami will showcase a group exhibition called My Body, My Rules, curated by Jennifer Inacio. And the feminist pioneer Judy Chicago is expected to have a retrospective at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

The FAC was initially inspired by the Women’s March in 2017, which DiQuinzio attended in LA. “I was completely overwhelmed and moved by what I saw,” she said.

When images emerged from all the marches the next day, from the pink hats to the placards to the enormous crowds of people, “it was revelatory and inspirational”, she said.

“We started to think how we could create a platform for art institutions across the US that could be grassroots and organic, like the women’s march was, and grow exponentially,” said DiQuinzio.

In early 2018, she and a team of women developed a plan, then contacted people they knew, asking if they would be willing to take part.

Timing it before the elections was key. “Going through the last presidential election, people weren’t attuned to having larger conversations about gender or equity,” said DiQuinzio. “I realized there needed to be a lot more conversations happening beforehand, so this is an attempt to create a civic space where those dialogues can happen.”

But can art exhibitions influence votes? “I have no idea,” she said. “All we can do is create a cultural space for these conversations to happen.”

One of the FAC’s committee members, Henriette Huldisch, adds that the effort is about more than just fostering feminist discourse: “The aim of the project is to make a broader commitment towards equity and inclusion in our institutions.”

Since the #MeToo movement, museums have come under fire for gender imbalance, and according to one recent report, only14% of exhibitions26 of America’s top museums over the past 10 years featured women.

“We hope to ignite a dialogue surrounding these issues, highlighting feminist issues leading into the next year,” said DiQuinzio. “Many feminist goals seek to benefit all of society; ending oppressive regimes and sexism is a benefit to all of humankind.”