Over the last fifteen years or so the art world has witnessed the steady rise of interest in older and dead artist-women whose work has previously been neglected or ignored for sustained periods. Writer Zoë Lescaze named it ‘the age of reparative exhibitions,’ whereby several high-profile mainstream art museums and institutions appear to be seeking to correct their prior exclusions and bring discussion of canon revision to the fore. This trend has outwardly signalled the use of strategies such as revision and recovery that have been discussed in feminist scholarship since the 1970s. The aim of this research, therefore, is to explore to what extent this evolving trend in the mainstream art world has followed an engagement with feminist discourse and feminist art history. It seeks to investigate what feminist curatorial strategies, if any, have been used in the production of the exhibitions that have recovered these artists, as well as examining how the exhibitions’ framing conditions have impacted the artistic legacy of the artists being foregrounded. Ultimately, it endeavours to determine whether or not this trend signifies that we are finally witnessing feminist strategies entering the museum in meaningful ways.
The thesis is structured over four chapters. The first traces one genealogy of feminist curatorial practice from the 1970s to the mid-1990s, outlining a selective number of key feminist curatorial strategies. The subsequent chapters provide distinct case studies that critically examine the renewed interest in three artists – Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), Lee Lozano (1930–1999) and Betye Saar (1926–). Each chapter analyses the exhibitions and curatorial work that has brought these artists mainstream recognition. It uses textual analysis of exhibition and artist-related materials, archival research, and interviews with key curators, artists, and writers associated with these artists recovery.
This research considers feminist curatorial practice as a form for feminist historiography, primarily focusing on an examination of curatorial practices in the mainstream art world from 2007 to the present. In doing so, it aims to provide a critical and timely reflection on a key moment in the history of the art world’s engagement with artist-women.