Women and the Arts Forum 2022: Women Artists and the National Gallery

Interesting online seminar from the National Gallery looking at women artists and the gallery.

There was a good blend of looking at what is in the collection, how the collection has been used by women and how contemporary artists are interacting with it all delivered with an interesting range of speakers.

The afternoon opened with a look at the roles of women hidden behind male artists such as sisters, daughters and mothers. Some like Marietta Robusti, daughter of Tinteretto, were artists themselves but others like Agnes Durer and Margaret Van Eyck ran their husband’s studios. They mused on how many similar women in the art world had been forgotten.

The meat of the event was looking at copying work in the gallery and the role this played in women’s art studies. We also discussed women who used these copies as a way of earning money. This included a fascinating examination of the gallery’s own registers tracing women who appeared in them from 1900-1910.

There were also interviews with two contemporary artists. Ulyana Gumeniuk, a Ukrania artist, who talked about the role copying ahs played in her career both at the National Gallery and in the Harmitage and Rosalind Mashashibi who discussed being the artists in residence at the gallery from 2020-21.

All in all a good afternoon which introduced me to some new names and ideas.

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