I am a midcareer (female) artist married to an established (male) artist. Throughout our relationship I have endured innumerable comments and actions that validate my husband and cast me into the shadows. At social events I will be standing by my husband as he is introduced as an artist, and I am introduced with only my first name (if introduced at all). In one particularly memorable/awful dinner after an opening, his gallerist at the time literally told me to get up from my seat because “artists sit at this table, wives and girlfriends are over there” (meaning another table). I get that he is more established than I am, but I also have an MFA, frequently show my work, am invited to give artist talks, and teach at a university. Recently we collaborated on a project—which overall was a good experience—but I am dismayed to see social-media posts that only credit him. On the night of the opening, one of the gallery staff said to me, “Isn’t [husband’s name]’s installation great?!” We had both attended meetings at the gallery (with this person in attendance), had both been included on logistical emails (with this person cc’ed), both responded to requests for information, and it was obvious that the two of us brought separate components to the installation. Yet I was erased. The times I have spoken up to correct these situations (saying, “I’m an artist too!”) have been awkward, and I know I come across as a bitch, petty, insecure, etc. The sexism of the art world astounds me…but I’m not sure what I can do.

Nancy Spero. Picasso and Frederick’s of Hollywood, 1990; handprinted collage on paper; two parts, each 17.25 x 109.625 in.

Thank you for this question, even though it gave me flashbacks. I, too, am a woman artist with a male-artist partner, and have experienced similar treatment. I remember being goggle-eyed with astonishment when a nonprofit director heartily thanked my husband for his contribution to their annual fundraising auction—a contribution of my artwork that I had donated! No doubt thousands of other women could provide comparable examples. A friend and I call the automatic credit that men seem to accrue merely by existing the penis award. And it’s atrocious.

Your plaintive, “I was erased,” breaks my heart. This is the fundamental charge of sexism—that women are not full human beings who deserve equal respect, attention, pay, healthcare, or credit for their accomplishments. The message is that you are less than your husband. This is gravely injurious, not only directly to you, but to your business partnerships, your potential friendships, your marriage, and your sanity.

Sexism must be tackled head-on, and women can’t be the only ones on the battlefield. Therefore, the first thing that has to happen is that your husband has to start speaking up on your behalf when these attacks occur in front of him. In introductions, if you are sidelined by, “…and this is his wife,” he must say, “Jane Lastname. My wife is also an artist, and we sometimes collaborate.” If someone barks at you to sit at the “wives’ table”—oh, how odious is this phrase!—he must step in and say, “There must be a misunderstanding. Jane is also an artist.” When articles and Instagram posts and tweets are published citing only your husband for work that is collaborative, he must split with you the labor of contacting the authors and requesting a correction. Men are responsible for patriarchy, and thus are at least 50 percent responsible for dismantling it.

But what about the times when your husband isn’t there? When correcting someone makes you feel like “a bitch, petty, insecure”? This is where some scripts and roleplay can come in handy. What would a secure response look and sound like? Consider this: You are only stating facts. I am an artist. This work was a collaboration. Your article contains a citation that is incorrect. I want you to imagine every scenario in which you have been erased, ignored, and slighted. Write your memories down. Then rewrite the scenarios as a series of short scripts in which the snubs are the same but you are playing a slightly different self—a cool, magnanimous character who is sadly and temporarily surrounded by intellectual lightweights. Think two parts Rosalind Russell, one part Mr. T. It might go something like this:

Gallery staff: Isn’t [husband’s name]’s installation great?!

You: [deep breath, charming smile, small genuine laugh, eye contact like laser beams] I’m glad you think so! He and I collaborated, I’m happy to hear that our work is successful.

My dear, you are a queen—regardless of who does or does not recognize it—and if you aren’t yet adept at handing out a correction that drips with long-suffering noblesse oblige, go study the movie Auntie Mame and then take your scripts into the bathroom and practice in the mirror until you feel more comfortable with straightening these simpletons out. Unfortunately, we live in a world full of people who have either never learned or are unwilling to behave with egalitarianism. These situations are something you will continue to deal with, so why not build an arsenal of strategies that allow you to navigate other people’s idiotic failings with elan? You won’t fix the world in a single go, but at least you’ll have some fun with it. The best middle finger is the one that’s raised with gaiety.

If you’re not already meeting with other women artists, please look for groups (or start your own) that can help support your practice and your overall mental health: Meetup, a campus group of fellow art-faculty members, ArtTable, and Women’s Caucus for Art are just a few suggestions. Try to meet regularly with other women, and work out a few strategic plans for supporting each other in the studio, at openings, and on social media. If we can’t rely on the penis award, we ought to be able to rely on each other. Good luck!

Karolina Melnica. Celujacy (Excellent), n.d.; performance documentation.

If you are currently attending or working in an academic arts institution, look around. What is the ratio of women to men in the student body? What proportion of the faculty is female? How many female faculty members are tenured? How many department chairs or deans are women? At many institutions, there is a visible disproportion between the number of women who are students versus the number who make it to ranked, tenured faculty or senior administration. This conspicuous lack of women in positions of power is the impetus for the groundbreaking 2015 study “Little Chance to Advance? An Inquiry into the Presence of Women at Art Academies in Poland,” published by the Katarzyna Kozyra Foundation.

Though the data portion of the study concentrates on Poland, it would be easy to extrapolate the majority of the philosophical findings to art departments, colleges, and universities around the world. “Little Chance to Advance” illustrates the cultural, psychological, and environmental factors that operate on individual and systemic levels to disenfranchise women, both within and beyond the academy. Currently, across the nine Polish visual art academies, women constitute 77 percent of the student body, but only 34 percent of assistant professors, 25 percent of associate professors, and 17 percent of full professors. In essence, the higher the level in the visual arts academy, the more women disappear. Are they opting out? If not, at which points in their trajectory are they being pushed out of the system?

Read the full article here.

Karolina Melnica. Celujacy (Excellent), n.d.; performance documentation.

Though the data portion of the study concentrates on Poland, it would be easy to extrapolate the majority of the philosophical findings to art departments, colleges, and universities around the world. “Little Chance to Advance” illustrates the cultural, psychological, and environmental factors that operate on individual and systemic levels to disenfranchise women, both within and beyond the academy. Currently, across the nine Polish visual art academies, women constitute 77 percent of the student body, but only 34 percent of assistant professors, 25 percent of associate professors, and 17 percent of full professors. In essence, the higher the level in the visual arts academy, the more women disappear. Are they opting out? If not, at which points in their trajectory are they being pushed out of the system?

Using data obtained from the academies and the Central Statistical Office of Poland, anonymous questionnaires, and in-depth interviews, “Little Chance to Advance” found that the gaps can’t be explained by a single factor. Students of both genders self-report similar aspirations and priorities, including the willingness to forego a family for the sake of their career; in fact, women are less eager than men to take care of their families after completing their studies. Equally significant, though divergent, were the responses to questions regarding employment strategies: Women put their faith mainly in experience, credentials, and hard work, while men placed more emphasis on social influences such as networking, family background, and even “having a romantic affair with someone important.”[1] The Literature Review and Results sections of the study discuss social capital and the ways in which power is transferred along gendered networks. In 2016, this isn’t surprising information—examinations of male networks of power and the “old boys’ club” have been available for quite a while—but the study rightly asserts that “social capital might be of even greater importance in the art world due to its vague criteria of evaluation and close relations with protégés” and “The importance of networking increases in dysfunctional institutions which offer few transparent paths of promotion.”[2]

The report takes a bleak turn at the discussion of psychological factors that regulate and shape the way that women move through the academy. It’s often assumed that women desire to perform traditional family roles and will willingly accept related career sacrifices, even though the data shows otherwise; thus, professors don’t promote women because they assume they will abandon their artistic practices (the study calls this “preventative discrimination”). In one interview, a professor said, “After their second, third year, women become less active as artists and start transitioning into the realm of motherhood, womanhood, the family. If I see a female student in her fourth year and she comes to classes with a small dog or a pet, I know she will be pregnant very soon.” In turn, this preventative discrimination can result in a lack of both institutional and informal rewards for good work, such as merit scholarships and introductions to a larger network. Further, women also report bullying and sexual harassment as impediments to their continued interest and advancement. To be clear, the problem is not simply that men are barring access to women; women also participate in sexism. The study shows that male students receive references from male professors at a rate of 27 percent, compared to 18 percent for female students—but there is a similar disparity for female professors, who provided references to 22 percent of male students, and only 13 percent of their female students.

Karolina Melnica. Celujacy (Excellent), n.d.; performance documentation.

“Little Chance to Advance” makes a significant contribution to the growing body of literature on women’s status within the arts. Though no other lateral region-specific studies have been done on the advancement of women in art academies, related investigations have been done to quantify and assess the status and representation of women artists. For example, the Brainstormers 2005 report analyzed seven top-ranking art schools on the East Coast and found that although MFA programs comprised an average of 60 percent women, the rosters of Chelsea galleries that these programs supposedly fed included an average of only 33 percent women. Michol Hebron’s ongoing Gallery Tally project also makes gender and commercial representation visible by presenting artist-made posters that show the gender makeup of represented artists at galleries around the world. In the UK, a-n’s 2006 “Making a Living as an Artist” report found that the mean annual pay for women in the arts is £19,344, compared to £23,492 for men [3]; a-n plans to publish a new comprehensive study this spring. Additionally, this conversation is not limited to the arts—other disciplines are also examining gender bias in academia.

There’s a lot to learn from “Little Chance to Advance.” The report points to the serious work that needs to be done both within the halls of academe and beyond, and the statistical and ethnographic data it contains provides a much-needed framework for change. Some issues, like networking and confidence building, may be readily addressed; others, such as the absence of role models and the very real influence of a patriarchal culture in contemporary Poland, will involve a more long-term effort to transform. Still, the study has the potential to have far-reaching effects. Some day, art academies may at last be able to offer the assurance of professional success to all their students equally, regardless of their gender.

[1] All quotes from the study can be found in “Little Chance to Advance? An Inquiry into the Presence of Women at Art Academies in Poland,” Katarzyna Kozyra Foundation, 2015, accessed online at http://katarzynakozyrafoundation.pl/en/projects/research on April 6, 2016.

[2] See also Zdenka Šadl, “‘We Women Are No Good at It’: Networking in Academia,” Czech Sociological Review, 2009, vol. 45, no. 6: 1,239–1,263. Accessed online at http://sreview.soc.cas.cz/uploads/325216c2e7609c1e783d709eaae64d3fe5410b7b_SadlSC2009-6.pdf on April 6, 2016.

[3] Sadly, the original study is now behind a membership paywall, so this data comes from “Women in the Arts: Some Questions,” accessed at http://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2012/mar/05/women-in-the-arts-introduction on April 6, 2016.

Lili White. Still from FOOL’S GOLD: CALIFORNIA ROADTRIP IN AN ELECTION YEAR, 2014; Color; sound; TRT: 78 min. Courtesy of the Artist.

I founded the Another Experiment by Women (AXW) Film Festival in 2010 after showing my work on a Manhattan Neighborhood Network community TV show—EYE:AM—curated by Victoria Kereszi, who was curating women’s films at the time. She would also present a live show in a theatre once a year at 2 Boots/Pioneer Theater, and later with New Filmmakers at Anthology Film Archives. Victoria was very committed to this and I realized seeing work by women had a different buzz. Growing up as a female with a body that is capable of giving birth to another, you’re going to have a different outlook on life. You have different issues and concerns.

I came out of painting, as did other experimental filmmakers, and I spent some time in the 1990s at Millennium Film Workshop, a nonprofit arts center and cinema where I met other filmmakers. Unfortunately, MFW has fallen on hard times due to rising rents and the depletion of grant funds. MFW gives people a place to come together at open screenings that serve as a show-and-tell of short work. Meeting other people who were interested in personal, experimental films resulted in us formulating experimental theory. These theories then migrated to universities’ curriculums. There is a community of filmmakers out there and MFW reminds us of this; there is no other place like it in the world.

Read the full article here.