According to researchers, female artists make up about 13% of the artists featured in art museums (Braz, Camberg, Ellis 2022). This number was not surprising to me. In Washington, D.C., the National Women in the Arts Museum is dedicated to featuring female artists who are not in art museums. How can guardians engage their young girls in art museums when most featured artists are men? The National Portrait Gallery and American Art Museum in Washington, DC have an exhibit that features women in art. However, out of the 60 or so art pieces in the large exhibit, I would say about 10% of the artists featured were women.
How can a museum curate an exhibit that showcases women in art and not focus more on female artists? This article will explore the positive impact that art museums can have on children’s lives and the issues with how women have been featured in art museums to encourage guardians to bring more young girls into art museums to help inspire more art museums in the efforts to shorten the gender gap.
Research suggests that children who are exposed to art have higher college aspirations. They can build solid neural pathways to essential skills as they get older, which can help provide them with more cognitive skills. Children exposed to art have fewer disciplinary infractions and improved engagement, have higher achievement on standardized test scores, and can better express themselves and their point of view (Shrikant 2023). Art allows children to use different parts of their brains that they would not usually use in everyday life or at other museums.
I saw this firsthand in myself, as my parents introduced my sister and I to art and art museums at a young age, as they enjoyed them. These visits altered how I viewed the world and allowed me to explore what it means to be a visual learner. As someone who struggled to learn how to read and write in school as a kid, I found that art made more sense out of the world. As a result, I pursued film studies in college and am getting an MA in Museum Studies to pursue a career in an art museum.
As an avid visitor to art museums, I rarely had discussions about female artists featured in art museums. Most of the artists my family and I discussed and enjoyed were men. According to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, out of all the artists featured in art museums, 87% are male, and 85% are white. Not only are female artists not being featured in art museums, but also POC and Queer artists are not as well (NMWA). These numbers are a direct result of the lack of research on female, POC, and queer artists. How can we inspire more research on female, POC and queer artists so that they can be featured in museums? The solution can start with engaging children in art museums.
If my parents had not exposed me to artists and art museums as a young child, I am not sure if I would have thought I could pursue a degree in the research of the art world. In college, I explored films created by men, women, people of color and queer filmmakers. Similarly to any other art pieces, male filmmakers are usually the ones featured in art museums as there is more research on male filmmakers than female filmmakers. It takes children wanting to explore these topics in college and in the future to conduct more research on female artists.
-Lindsay Guarnieri
Intern, Curatorial
Girl Museum
References
Braz, Anna, et al. “The Staggering Lack of Female Artists in America’s Museums.” Axios , 10 Sept. 2022, www.axios.com/2022/09/10/art-museums-women-men-gender-disparity.
Shrikant, Aditi. “Take Your Kids to Art Museums to Strengthen Memory, Logical Reasoning: ‘use It or Lose It,’ Says Johns Hopkins Child Development Expert.” CNBC, CNBC, 29 June 2023, www.cnbc.com/2023/06/29/child-development-expert-take-your-kids-to-art-museums.html.
“Get the Facts about Women in the Arts.” NMWA, 22 July 2020, nmwa.org/support/advocacy/get-facts/.