Women in the Collection

Women in the Collection is a docu-art examination of gender imbalance in museums as exposed by definitive guides published by American museums. What is considered essential and by whom? Essential or incomplete? This project is available for exhibition, please send me a message if you’d like to discuss. Contact form

Project Statement

‘Women in the Collection’ began with casual browsing of The Essential Guide in the Art Institute of Chicago cafe. As I flipped through the pages it was clear that women artists were not particularly essential to this guide. What is considered essential and by whom? As I made my way to the contemporary section, I hoped to find this gender imbalance addressed. After all, wasn’t that a Georgia O’Keefe on the cover? This section was largely bereft too with only 7 of 85 works. Essential or incomplete? 

This project highlights gender imbalance in museums by looking at one narrow slice, the definitive guide. Guides are cataloged by gender, pages with female artists extracted, and then rebound into standalone guides with modified covers. Two measures of scale are used; total pages and those pages remade to scale.

The process of creating the guides is documented in a series of photos, analyses of artists represented, and notes. Modified guides and satirical “promotional” posters highlight persistent gender imbalances in museum collections and the male-dominated narrative history of art. Decades after the Guerilla Girls highlighted the lack of representation and asked “Do women have to be naked to get into the MET. Museum?,” there remains a widespread undervaluing of women’s creative output.