Five Museums Unveil Audio Guides Honoring Lesser-Known Women Artists | Smart news

In honor of Women’s History Month, five museums in the United States and the United Kingdom are debuting curated audio guides dedicated to the work of women and gender non-conforming artists.

The project, titled Museums Without Men, is the brainchild of Katie Hessel, an art historian and author of 2022. The history of art without men,

“While I always encourage people to go to museums, I also want them to look a little further,” Hessel writes in an essay for guard. “[I want them to] seek out the work of women and gender non-conforming artists and subsequently realize how much more work there is to do.

Participating institutions include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts in California, the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, Hepworth Wakefield in northern England, and Tate Britain in London.

Hessel hopes the guidelines will shed new light on gender disparities at prominent art institutions that remain predominantly focused on white male art. The guardLanre Bakare points to a striking 2019 study of 18 U.S. art museums that found 87 percent of artists were male and 85 percent were white.

When Hessel visits museums, she always looks for works by women—and when she spots them, she finds that the accompanying labels often mention other male artists. “None of the male artists had female names,” she tells the guard. “We need to talk about artists as artists, not as ‘the wife of,’ ‘the muse of,’ or ‘the daughter of.'”

In the audio tours, Hessel provides information about each artist’s life and career while placing each artwork in a broader cultural context. They are designed for art lovers of all levels and focus on figures that visitors may not be familiar with.

At the Met, for example, Hessel directs visitors to The horse fair (1852–55), a 17-foot-wide work by French artist Rosa Bonner that hangs in a room full of nude female bodies by male artists. According to Hessel, Bonneur herself was at the horse market, but had to get permission from the French authorities to wear trousers to blend in with the men.

“It was the largest painting of animals in 1850 when it was made,” Hessel says in the guide. “Because women were forbidden [studying nudes], they had to look to other genres. This is why we see so many artists exploring still life and landscape. But Rosa Bonneur is truly a pioneer in animal painting.”

Hessel will focus on no more than 12 works of art in each museum, giving visitors a curated experience without overwhelming them, reports guard. The audio guides, which run continuously throughout March, are available on each museum’s website and on the Hessel website.

“I hope this is just the beginning of a project that opens people’s eyes to artists they may not have known about, uncovering stories that speak to humanity and show us a different perspective,” Hessel wrote in his essay. “Ultimately, the goal is to show people of all backgrounds, genders and ages that they too can be a part of this conversation.”