Identity and Diversity in Art History

"Art is nothing if you don’t reach every segment of the people."

(Keith Haring, American Pop artist)

Until the late-20th and early-21st Centuries, the History of Art focused scholarly attention primarily on white, male, heterosexual artists. Consequently, the stories of innumerable artists across a spectrum of backgrounds were overlooked, erased, or forgotten. More efforts have been taken to expand the scope of who is included in the History of Art canon as art historians, art critics, and curators utilize their positions to transform the discipline into a more inclusive field of study. “Identity and Diversity” is a Special Collection that features the works of painters, illustrators, and printmakers who comprise an exceptionally diverse range of cultural identities. The collection will be divided into three main subsections that highlight the artistic contributions of Women Artists, Artists of Colour, and LGBTQ+ Artists. As a way to introduce today’s viewers to a rich selection of creative figures, this continually growing collection will represent diverse artists across all major and minor art movements, styles, and historical periods: from Dutch Baroque still-life painter Clara Peeters and African-American portraitist Joshua Johnson, to gay British-Jewish Pre-Raphaelite painter Simeon Solomon and Contemporary South Korean artist Myonghi Kang.

Curated and edited by Liam Otero

Quotes

 

But in actuality, as we all know, things as they are and as they have been, in the arts as in a hundred other areas, are stultifying, oppressive, and discouraging to all those, women among them, who did not have the good fortune to be born white, preferably middle class and, above all, male. The fault lies not in our stars, our hormones, our menstrual cycles, or our empty internal spaces, but in our institutions and our education--education understood to include everything that happens to us from the moment we enter this world of meaningful symbols, signs, and signals.

Linda Nochlin (1931 - 2017), Feminist Art Historian

 

 

While an increasing number of male academic, political, and cultural figures have felt comfortable enough in recent years to proclaim themselves feminists, absorbing aspects of feminist politics and theory into their thinking, their gestures are most often built on an essentialized and static dichotomy between men and women. But men must do more than admit their complicity in patriarchy; they must begin to rethink the very boundaries that shape and define what it means to be a man.

Maurice Berger (1956 - 2020), Cultural Historian, Art Critic, and Curator

 

 

I do not know of any religion that does not declare women to be feeble-minded, unclean, generally inferior creatures to males, although most Humans assume that we are the cream of all species. Women, alas; but thank God, Homo Sapiens! Most of us, I hope, are now aware that a woman should not have to demand Rights. The Rights were there from the beginning; they must be Taken Back Again, including the Mysteries which were ours and which were violated, stolen or destroyed, leaving us with the thankless hope of pleasing a male animal, probably of one’s own species.

Leonora Carrington, British-born, Mexican, Surrealist painter

 

 

Art is nothing if you don’t reach every segment of the people.

Keith Haring, American Pop artist

 

 

In the 1960s I had rationalized that we were all fighting for the same issues and why shouldn’t the men be in charge … …the day I decided to launch a protest against an exhibit, to be NMWA Educator’s Guide for American People, Black Light: Faith Ringgold’s Paintings of the 1960s Page 5 held at the School of Visual Arts in New York, protesting the U.S. policy of war, repression, racism and sexism—an exhibit that itself was all male! I declared that if the organizers didn’t include fifty percent women, there would be ‘war.’ Robert Morris, the organizer, agreed to open the show to women, and that was, so far as I’m concerned, the beginning of the Women’s Movement in New York.


Faith Ringgold, African-American artist

 

I was very, very isolated in the male-dominated, male-centered art world, and so I had to build a community because I didn’t have one. And I also understood that success as an artist depends on a community of support — supporting family members, gallerists, collectors, critics, curators — and I didn’t have any of that. So in order to survive and succeed I had to build it myself. I had to do a lot of things myself, because there was an absence of support for women artists. There still is at the level of support that exists for male artists.

Judy Chicago, American feminist artist

 

 

My reaction [to Lucas Samaras’ copy of her mirrored rooms installation] was, ‘He did it again.’ I hope Lucas pursues the path of creativity and pain inherent in artists from now on, instead of following what Kusama has done.

  

Yayoi Kusama, Japanese Contemporary artist