What Covid-19 Has Taken From Us, What It Has Given Us
2020 was going to be an exceptional year for the history of art, with an unprecedented number of exhibitions in large institutions dedicated to female-identifying artists. Coincidentally, with the centenary of women’s right to vote in the United States and an increased global awareness, this “good year” in the history of equality was to culminate in March, Women’s Month, with a spectacular number of thematic and retrospective exhibitions. March turned into a nightmare: Covid-19 has stolen the spotlight from female artists. In April, the lockdown continued to penalize them, while May will surely be sombre and summer openings even more complicated. Yet, even if AWARE remains open with the production of new content adapted to the new conditions, it seems to me that we must remain curious about what would have been shown, of what can be saved, of what the lockdown invites us to do. It is up to us to rediscover what Covid-19 has taken from us by closing the doors of the museums – notably with the time it has given us – by finding meaning in the rare but essential information given to us about women artists during these weeks of lockdown.
In France, unless you subscribe to Télérama, you’ll find no information circulating about Cindy Sherman’s retrospective, which was scheduled to open on April 1 at the Fondation Louis Vuitton. Lafayette Anticipations has offered online content that has made us forget the early closure of Rachel Rose’s solo exhibition. We also regret the early closure of Claudia Andujar’s exhibition at the Fondation Cartier, of Femmes années 50. Au fil de l’abstraction, peinture et sculpture in Rodez, MECARÕ. L’Amazonie dans la collection Petitgas at the MOCO in Montpellier, and Up to and Including Limits: After Carolee Schneemann at the Muzeum Susch in Switzerland. In the United States, the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment (passed by Congress in June 1919 and ratified in August 1920), which gave women the right to vote, generated more initiatives than it is possible to list. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston launched the celebrations by dedicating a floor of its collections to women artists last September, with the evocative title, Women Take the Floor. The Baltimore Museum of Art’s decision to purchase only works by women artists for one year, which was widely reported in the press, was accompanied by dozens of exhibitions of women artists and major female collectors. An article in Forbes cited five major exhibitions of women artists in the US without claiming to be exhaustive. Among these remarkable exhibitions that have closed too early is the magnificent rediscovery of the conceptual, political and ecological work of Ágnes Dénes at The Shed in New York.
We are all the more sensitive to exhibitions existing online because the time saved by visiting them invites us to virtually discover them, such as Fantastische Frauen at the Schirn Kunsthalle (devoted to 34 women Surrealists from across the globe) in Frankfurt or the retrospective of Lygia Clark at the Guggenheim Bilbao. The curator of Artemisia Gentileschi’s retrospective at the National Gallery, the first of its kind in the United Kingdom, which was due to open on April 4, made no mistake. Rather than feeling sorry for herself, Letizia Treves elegantly listed all the available books, films and online resources on A. Gentileschi – who is considered the “first” of the great women artists.
Closed just days after its opening in Delhi, Voices of Women, an awaited exhibition within the Indian scene is now accessible through a video online. The gallery Hauser & Wirth has used the quarantine to launch both a discussion platform and a digital exhibition of drawings by Louise Bourgeois, which is remarkably well-documented and precise, an exemplary model. Specifically, digital initiatives are all the more valuable as they seem to be shaping our future. Since the lockdown there have been at least 5 online exhibitions of female artists put online by New York galleries. We have rediscovered resources such as Women in Media Arts on Ars Electronica, and the programme devised by Claudia Müller on Arte where women artists are invited to propose their imaginary museum of women artists (Jenny Holzer, Kiki Smith, Katharina Grosse, Annette Messager, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Tatiana Trouvé, Monica Bonvicini, etc.). Isn’t it time to create an imaginary museum using digital resources where women artists can finally be equal to men?