NMWA FRESH TALK
RIGHTING THE BALANCE III- Can There Be Gender Parity in Museums?
Panel Discussion
Speakers: Laurence des Cars, Director of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, Frances Morris, Director of the Tate Modern, London, and Eike Schmidt, director of the Uffizi Gallery, Florence
FRANCES: With three such different institutions, with very, very different histories and contexts, there is a broad sense, I think, between the three of us, of a commitment to approaching gender parity with all the tools that we can muster. And we do have to have very different tools because we have very different institutions. And it’s fantastic to hear such, you know, I feel really buoyed up by the examples that have been cited this afternoon. But I’m also aware that there is absolutely no room for complacency. I’m very involved in the contemporary world, and it is a world. One of the things that I’ve been involved in is taking our collection from a Western European model to a truly global collection, and we collect now from multiple centers of creativity, rather than from a single kind of center. But I’m very conscious that when I visit art schools, that they’re full of women. 60% of students studying Fine Arts in the UK are female. The picture, when you look at commercial galleries, is currently around 30%. So, there’s this huge sense of dynamic commitment and creativity amongst people leaving school and undertaking their first steps to become artists. And yet, very many of them fall at the first hurdle. So, we’re nowhere near gender parity in terms of the achievements of young people. And I’m not sure what the answer is. But if you look at the commercial gallery system, and then you look at the auction houses, and you look at the prices for art, we’ve still got a huge distance to go before there’s a genuine, a kind of ecology that embraces both men and women and artists of color. So, I suppose one of the questions I have for both of my colleagues here, is how do you see your institutions, which of course embrace history, but are absolutely at the here and now shaping a generation of potential artists or fledgling artists as they engage with your collections and move forward with their careers?
LAURENCE: If I may, I think the situation is quite different when you’re dealing with a historical collection, because you’re facing the reality of a certain history that has been made, the choices that have been made by the institutions over the course of years, and sometimes it’s a very long history. And you’re facing this reality and you cannot change it, you know, in two weeks’ time and say, “Okay, I want to change things.” You know, you have to do with this reality. What you can change is, of course, you’ll probably see exhibitions of acquisitions, actually, the collection is definitely a very, very important piece. I think you can change things by shaping differently the strategy, the acquisition strategy, obviously. But I think that the question of research, again, is extremely important. And I think that in fields like, again, for 19th Century photography, a lot of things are going to be discovered in the coming years. We only know the tip of the iceberg right now. And it’s really something that we discovered working on this, “Who Is Afraid of Women Photographers?” exhibitions, and the Celine Lagarde thing will be, probably a discovery for the French public, and I think that, in those peripheral, or not at the center of things, fields, you will find a lot of answers and a lot of possibility to change a little bit, you know, the way we see things. I do not expect big changes around Impressionism or, you know, we know the reality of women artists within this circle. But again, the show on Bethe Morisot, which has never been done in a national museum since the last war, I mean, this is crazy, you know, the lack of recognition of Morisot as a single artist. She’s always shown in France as the friend of the Impressionist, you know…
AUDIENCE: (Laughs)
LAURENCE: … of the male Impressionists. (Laughs) Which, you realize, you know, that you really need to do, to change things, even with a famous name like Bethe Morisot. I mean, Bethe Morisot is not a completely unknown. But, again, I think it’s, in fields of maybe decorative art also, could be very interesting. I’m sure that we will find new names, new creative perspectives, because they were not, again, at the center of the institutional life in the 19th Century, so there were freer expressions maybe, and possibilities for women to express themselves in those fields. And I do believe that this kind of approach and research is really a very stable ground to build on, with a relevancy also. We have a new story to tell.
FRANCES: Do you think that, you used that term, “Margins…” and “center.”
LAURENCE: The margins, yes.
FRANCES: Do you think that’s a useful way of talking about… or it’s a very hierarchical way of talking about different areas of practice. Would it ever be possible to reverse that?
LAURENCE: Maybe, you don’t know exactly what the movement will be in the coming years. But for me, margins it’s definitely not a hierarchy. It’s generally in the margins that the (laughs) most interesting things are happening.
FRANCES: It’s where the mushrooms grow in the forest.
LAURENCE: Absolutely, absolutely. It’s where things are really moving and changing. And the margins in 19th Century culture, in Avant-Garde culture, (laughs) as crazy as it is, is the center of things, basically. So, it means that those margins need to expand to women artists. It’s not only about bohemian things and not only about the counterculture of, I don’t know, a new painting around Manet and Impressionism, it’s about including maybe new circles that we have completely discarded from an official history, an institutional history.
FRANCES: Yeah, so in a way we’re right at the beginning of thinking how to do this.
LAURENCE: I think, yes. We’re really starting. There’s something starting there.
FRANCES: Do you feel the same thing? That we’re just at the beginning of, you know, unpicking and maybe reconstructing the history?
EIKE: Yes. Reconstructing in a way. Because, I mean, what I’ve found so amazing is the fact that in Florence there happen to be so many works by women artists from the 16th Century…
FRANCES: Incredible.
EIKE: …by the 17th and then by the 18th Century, and then I am wondering why is that the case? I mean, for me it was a personal discovery when I came into the Uffizi, into the storage, but it’s been a discovery really for the world, I think. There’s one hypothesis, in fact, Florence was also very important for woman patronage, or we should call it matronage, perhaps, but at any rate.
AUDIENCE: (Laughs) [APPLAUDS]
FRANCES: (Laughs)
EIKE: And in fact, I mean, long before I became director here, when I worked on a research network on “Medici Women Patrons,” that’s how they called it, with Sheila ffolliott, who is here present also, and that’s how I got some information, I mean, we gathered that information too. It’s the city where Eleonora di Toledo was a Grand Duchess. It is the city where Victoria (inaudible) in the 17th Century doubled the art collection of the Medici. It is then the city where Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici in 1737 actually made a pact, a Pacte de Famille with the Hapsburgs, that were coming in as the new Grand Dukes of Tuscany, keeping together the entire collection. I think that’s one line of research. The other one is the fact that in the 16th Century, and again in the 18th Century, Florence was such, and Tuscany was such, an open city-state, and then actually territorial state, as well. In the 18th Century, the Constitution of Tuscany was the most modern in the world. It was the first country in the world where the death penalty was abolished, where there was the liberty of the press, there was the liberty to openly practice sexual preferences. In the 18th Century. So, I mean, 18th Century in Florence was far more ahead compared to most countries today.
AUDIENCE: (Laughs)
EIKIE: (Laughs) And that also led, already at the times, to women artists gathering there. I mean, [Jane?? (Anne Seymour Damer)] came from London to Florence to be a sculptress in Florence. And so, we’re rediscovering that, but again there were times already in the past where we were already quite ahead and then the pendulum swung back. So, we have to be really careful to make sure that what has been reached so far that this is not something that we will be falling behind.
FRANCES: So why were these histories suppressed?
EIKE: Well that’s a really good question, but I don’t have the answer.
FRANCES: Try.
AUDIENCE: (Laughs)
PANEL: (Laughs)
EIKE: Well, the 19th Century certainly was one of the most patriarchal centuries that we know of. And, in fact, it’s a line of thought that needs to be further pursued. So, I think that we’re not ready to have that as a question for the exams. (Laughs)
AUDIENCE/PANEL: (Laughs)
FRANCES: But if you think of it, in a way it’s to do with the writing of art history, and the study of art history. And so, who are the people that are going to be rewriting the art history? Where are we finding those scholars who are going to be doing this research?
EIKE: Well, I mean, that, actually, I think, is a very positive fact again, that, I mean, in Florence we have lots of people. The gatekeepers now are not only white males like they were in the 19th Century so I think that is clearly a very important factor. That when art history as an academic discipline was established in the 19th Century, whereas the artists were often women, the art historians were really never women after the Romantic Period. There were Romantic art critics that were female, but not in the 19th Century, and so that clearly played an important role. Now, fortunately, most of the curators, at least in Italy, are women. And most.. well, but you mentioned it before. Most of the high-powered gallerists are male.
FRANCES: Yeah.
EIKE: But at least in the universities, the museums. Here we do have curators. And, of course, we have open-minded male curators and directors once in a while. (Laughs)
AUDIENCE: (Laughs)
FRANCES: (Laughs) I think one of… Well, interesting to know your thoughts. There’s almost a crisis in the UK in terms of the production of art historians. And more and more of the talent pool that studies art history is drawn to contemporary art. And I think it’s absolutely crucial that we nurture a new generation of art historians who come to art history with an awareness of contemporary art. Because, you know, we are all of us operating in the here and now. But that seems to be a very big challenge.
LAURENCE: The crisis was the same in France. It’s why an institute like Orsay, you know, can play a little role there, saying we will have this research center and we want you to join, you know, for new students coming. I mean, it’s very, very important. Because, otherwise, things will stay as they are. If it’s not a movement, if it’s not a dynamic really carried by a younger generation, it will go nowhere.
FRANCES: Well, what role does the audience have in what we’re all doing? Are we aware of an audience, is the museum still a kind of top-heavy, broad cross model or are we doing this because we’re responding to a demonstrable need in the demographic in our audiences? Who comes to your exhibitions? Do they flock to the Orsay?
LAURENCE: I hope they will flock to Orsay.
PANEL AND AUDIENCE: (Laughs)
LAURENCE: I’m sure they will flock to Orsay, actually.
FRANCES: Yeah.
LAURENCE: There was a great excitement about the acquisition of the Camille Claudel pieces. You know, they were really important articles, people. We made a little display, you know, of all the acquisitions that were made by the national museums and regional museums around this extraordinary auction that took place last November in Paris. And there was a lot of interest from the public and the press and the media. So, I think there’s a pressure on the institution, you know. It’s not only inside the institution. It’s just that you need to rebalance things, and people are ready for that, they want to hear a new story. A new way of telling the story. Definitely. And they’re right, they’re completely right.
FRANCES: Yeah. I sense that when we, we’ve had two sort of benchmarking exercises at Tate in this process. One was in 2000 when we opened Tate Modern, where we got a very, very bad press for departing from the norm, from messing around with history, with talking about multiple histories rather than a single history, foregrounding women, thinking about the representation of women. Sixteen years later when we opened the new Tate Modern, there was absolute applause at a 50/50 gender balance in the collection. It was completely extraordinary how things had changed in a relatively short space of time. Is that your experience?
EIKE: It is, absolutely. I mean, we didn’t have the 2000 steps that we are going straight into a new way of displaying art. Also, we got far more thematic in our new galleries. Before, it was actually not historical, it was topographical. That was the gold standard at the Uffizi. And there are people who believe that this needs to be topographical because the artists are in some way connected to the city where they were either born or active. When they were only born there or active there, it’s getting more absurd, but it’s…
PANEL AND AUDIENCE: (Laughs)
EIKE: Yeah. And that’s the reason why we now, for instance, in the old installation we have Raphael coming after the Mannerists, because he was born in Urbino, and now this is all changing. And the public responds very well. Also, to the solo shows for Suor Plautilla Nelli, who today is not yet again a household name and we had more than half a million visitors, which for Florence is quite a lot. And we’re seeing already the crowds for Maria Lai and also for Elisabetta Sirani.
FRANCES: Well, I’ve been amazed by the impact over a number of years. If we at Tate Modern do a medium scale show of Yayoi Kusama, and it gets, I don’t know, x number of hundreds of thousands of visitors, and it transfers to New York and the visitors double, and it transfers to Paris and tripling, and so on and so forth. And what’s really exciting about that is that you can, with a degree of speed, you can create an audience and a context, and you can put somebody back into history, which is very exciting.
EIKE: When did you do Yayoi Kusama? Which year was that?
FRANCES: It was 2010. And look at her now.
EIKE: Right. Yes, exactly. So, I mean, we got our self-portrait also right after that. So, I mean, it’s really thanks to Tate that the Uffizi got the Yayoi Kusama self-portrait, in a sense.
FRANCES: Well, we didn’t discover it. It was on the route; it was part of the rebuilding of her. Obviously, she’d had an earlier career. But like so many women artists, over the last many hundreds of years, they have this moment of achievement and then they disappear. And that is the real challenge, I think. How do we sustain those careers? How do we support those women to stay visible?
EIKE: Mmm.
FRANCES: One of the things that we were talking about earlier, and which, for me, is absolutely essential to issues around gender, are issues around diversity. And I think what we’ve done as a museum is, it’s been a hand-in-hand approach, that we’ve seen the kind of institutional neglect of women and race in the collection, and acted on them, to a degree, at the same time. So that we’ve become a… the demographic has broadened in a number of different ways.
Has that been your experience, that they are conjoined? Or should they be? Or is it just not relevant to your collection?
LAURENCE: No, it’s partly relevant. I mean, it’s relevant in the society of today. But it’s, what I told you earlier, Frances, is that in France we have a kind of approach, which is very different from England, for instance, which is the Republican ideal of one community. You know, one community, but it in a way blurs the question of diversity. So, for a national institution, it’s quite tricky to sustain those Republican values because they are very important, and they are the common ground on which the French nation has been built since the Revolution. But at the same time, we are facing a change of society that is absolutely obvious, and a need to absolutely share the heritage which we have in our institutions, with people coming from very diverse worlds and diverse heritage, diverse culture, traditions, whatever, you know. So, it’s a challenge for a national institution. But, for instance, Orsay, and it’s a very interesting, I think, perspective, will be programming an exhibition next year, next spring, actually, on the Black model in French art from Géricault to Matisse. It’s actually a second venue of a show that you will see in New York at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, this fall, coming this fall, it will be called “Posing Modernity: The History of the Black Model…” centered on from Manet to Matisse. We extended a little bit the chronology in Orsay because I wanted to start with the French Revolution and the question of abolishment of slavery which is, of course, absolutely central. It’s one of the political backgrounds of the subject. And it’s the first time, to my knowledge, that an institution, quite a traditional institution of fine art, is really tackling a subject that is completely non-existent in the history of art, at least in France.
FRANCE: You mean not acknowledged.
LAURENCE: Not acknowledged, completely not recognized as a subject. And for the first time we will look at Olympia by Manet in a complete way, not only concentrating on Victorine Meurent’s body, but on (Laure?/law?), face and presence, this Black presence inside the Manet work. And we know, we know the model, we know where she lived, you know, we know, thanks to the research of Dennis (inaudible) , one of the curators of the show and the French period of the show, we extended our knowledge of the question of the Black models, going from anonymous models to, really, portraits. And this is a new way of telling this Avant Garde story, and really from artists like Gericault, Manet, Matisse, you know, big moments in the history of art that will be seen in another way. And seen…
FRANCES: Well, it’s potentially really extremely problematic, isn’t it?
LAURENCE: Yes it is.
FRANCES: Because you’re dealing with a contested history.
LAURENCE: Of course, of course. Of course, it is, but I think it’s very interesting to really try to expand the vision, and to give the audience the whole picture in a way.
FRANCES: But is that akin to, I mean, you mentioned briefly this project around rape in relation to your collection?
EIKE: Yes, and there, is of course, other examples of violence against women. In fact, the Loggia dei Lanzi belongs to the Uffizi, it does not just have The Rape of Polyxena, but also The Rape of the Sabine Women, and also The Killing of Medusa, which is, again, a man that hits off the head of a woman. And so, basically, there’s lots of violence against women shown in the art.
FRANCES: Always has been and as is today.
EIKE: As is today.
FRANCES: It’s a very contemporary thing.
EIKE: It’s very contemporary. In fact, Italy has on average, more than 139 killings of women every year, which is far too many, obviously. It’s, however, comparable to the rate of killing women in Germany, so it’s not any kind of southern thing, as oftentimes is believed. I mean, the circumstances are different, but the numbers are the same. It’s really a European problem, a worldwide problem, in fact.
FRANCES: And are you doing that exhibition because violence against women is a particularly contested, you know, it’s a moment, in this context is something that we’re all deeply concerned about?
EIKE: Exactly. So, I mean, that’s really the driver. So, the excuse of it is that we were able to buy this model for the show, but the true driver is that it unfortunately has a strong contemporary relevance. And in the same way we’re now putting up a big exhibition on Islamic art this summer, which we will be dedicating to a man from Senegal who was just shot dead two weeks ago in the center of Florence, and the murderer claims that there were no racist motives, but, I mean, clearly, there is no reason to believe him. He claims that he wanted to commit suicide. But, I mean, shooting another person and committing suicide is another scene. So, he’s not very credible at all. And so, at the Uffizi, in fact, we did one minute of silence after that, and it was incredibly well-received by all the visitors of the Uffizi, they all participated. I mean, there was not a single person who continued with their tours or looking at the art. These are real problems of our contemporary society, and when these things happen, just less than a mile away from the museum, we need to address them with the collection. And when we can actually face those problems with historical evidence, even better so. So, in this new installation of 17th Century paintings, in fact, I did put next to the famous portrait by Justus Suttermans which shows the Grand Duke Cosimo II with his son, Ferdinando II and his wife, Mary Maddalena of Austria. I put another painting, also by Justus Suttermans, with other three people, which are two peasant women and one African Tuscan boy from the early 17th Century, to really to show the society at 360 degrees, and not just the ruling family. And, in fact, there were a number of Africans present in the 17th Century in Florence. And we know his name, he was called Pierro, so, again, we have the model’s name, we know a lot about his life. And we need to give these stories back to the people of the past, but also of the present. That is truly important. And that way, as a museum, we have a significance that otherwise we would not have.
FRANCES: I mean, I think it’s incredibly exciting to hear about the ways that you’re using a historic collection to, in a pretty swift way, respond to issues that need addressing really urgently in the now. One of the things that I’ve been increasingly aware about at Tate Modern, as we work with groups of young people who come into the museum for public programs and learning activities, is that they’re desperately in need of seeing themselves in the institution. You know, you can’t be what you can’t see. And we need to surface those stories and identities and histories that a much more broad and diverse audience can relate to. And it’s fascinating to see how you can do it with art of the 17th and 18th Century, as well as art of the 20th Century. And I find that really inspiring. Do you feel the need, that people want to see themselves reflected?
LAURENCE: Certainly, but I don’t see it as the ultimate goal. I think you need to find something of yourself in order to discover other things. And a museum should play on the two levels. Come and see things that could interest you but discover other things.
FRANCES: Discover, yeah.
LAURENCE: Open your minds. Open your minds.
FRANCES: Yeah. But you have to open those doors first.
LAURENCE: Yes. You have to open. The first step is extremely important, and it’s a very tricky thing, as you know, because some people just feel excluded from the museum. And they just don’t even think of going to a museum. So, this distance is really one of the key questions in our present societies. But once we can sometimes succeed, you know, in bringing to the museum, we do a lot of outreach, I mean, to different sectors of society, and we are really committed to this, and I know that in the Uffizi it’s the same. I mean, it’s really the social role of a museum that we are talking about. But we have also a cultural role (laughs), we cannot forget this. So, it’s really bringing people and inviting them to come to the museum. And then making things really a discovery, a moment of expanding a little bit your vision, your knowledge. Diversity, again. Diversity (inaudible)…
FRANCES: How far do you, in your respective museums, feel you have the teams that adequately reflect the demographic of the audiences that you’re trying to recruit? And is it possible, really, to reach people unless we also reflect them?
LAURENCE: Well, the reality, I have to say, is that the question of diversity is absolutely, is a kind of failure, at least for cultural teams, in France, I mean, they do not reflect the diversity of society. It’s why we work a lot with all the different communities and private foundations, where you do find this diversity and they reflect this diversity. We need partners there, because we cannot on our own carry everything and imagine everything. We’re not legitimate, in a way. We’re not legitimate, definitely. So, that’s a tough question, because it deals with education, with the university system also in France, and a certain life of our institution which are Republican, but at the same time, are really driven by a certain elite way of seeing things. And I’m the perfect example of these elites, so, you know, it’s awful. It’s absolutely awful. My only excuse is that I’m a woman. (Laughs)
PANEL AND AUDIENCE: (Laughs)
FRANCES: But you’re a woman.
LAURENCE: So, I can survive.
FRANCES: We have a White male elite here.
EIKE: Yeah.
FRANCES: What’s your excuse?
AUDIENCE AND PANEL: (Laughs)
EIKE: Well, um…
LAURENCE: We’re lost, we’re lost…
FRANCES: I think that’s a great moment to end. We’re going to go on talking over supper. But thank you very much (laughs).
EIKE: Thank you.
AUDIENCE AND PANEL: [APPLAUDS]
[END]