Freda Robertshaw’s small,greyscale paintingComposition (1947) popped up modestly on the next wall as a historical counterpoint of abstraction,surrealism and mystery.
Was I witnessing didactic,numb curation by stern arts bureaucrats? No. Here are vital,high quality works,deserving of a wide audience and put into conversation with one another,but historically overlooked due to systematic bias.
Likewise,the blockbuster show by Hilma af Klint last year at the Art Gallery of NSW both mesmerised audiences and showed that there really are gaps in our knowledge of what the history of art – and who made it – really looks like.
That’s where the critics of these kinds of quotas go wrong:a dash of basic gender equality isn’t socially engineering a new kind of politically-correct art dictatorship. It’s an artistic opportunity – a long-needed,modest cultural change,and an innovative invitation to find new ideas in the collections,archives,themes,forms and myths behind the grand,authoritative facades of the large galleries.
But we can hardly embrace the NGA’s gender quota with naivety. All over the world,a crisis has opened up,heightened by the heady calls of Black Lives Matter:what are big museums and galleries even for? The answer isn’t as easy as it may seem.
Loading
These organisations are hardly radical. They very often reinforce the biases and the elites of their times. They are a product of both enlightenment thinking and social democracy. But their collections have historically been storehouses for the myths and works of white men charged with telling our origin stories.
When will the supposedly universal values of the enlightenment be extended to women,gender diverse people,people of colour,Indigenous people and queer people of various socioeconomic statuses? If we have a legacy of cultural funding to serve the public good,why does it still seem as though a brilliant artist has to win capitalism’s demographic lottery to be represented in public collections?
The big galleries can’t pretend any longer to be neutral arbiters of art history,nor can they get away with being agents of malaise at a time when art history is being reconsidered. Though it rages overseas,this conversation – the identity crisis of galleries and museums – hasn’t been heard as widely in Australia.
The NGA’s gender quota is a tacit admission that it has historically failed to reflect the variety of those who make excellent art.
The NGA has operated since 1967,within the context of governmental cultural policy. But all those taxpayer-funded decades have meant that the careers and stories of male artists have been supported over other demographics. Public art galleries aren’t just tourist stops or nonpartisan repositories for the past. They’re non-profit,democratic institutions in service to society – have they been effectively performing that role? To continue fuelling the male-dominated canon to the diminishment of the Angelina Pwerles of the world is the truly dangerous form of social engineering. A little accountability in the form of a quota is the least that can be done.
Loading
I hope the NGA’s decision creates tangible pressure on other institutions to follow suit and get real about their very real obligations to the public. If you’re a mega-rich property baron with a passion for modern art,and you set up your own private museum,feel free to line your walls with a procession of Picasso and Pollock. The bias of testosterone-driven greatness is your prerogative.
Likewise,if you’re a collector,and you just want to purchase Ben Quiltys and bushranger art for your home,be my guest. But running a public institution is no joke. Art is made by people of all genders,races,ethnicities,ideologies,world-views,religions and personality disorders. But the collections and exhibitions of big art galleries have only just started to tell this story.
Acknowledging the lushness of who makes great art is neither KPI-driven bureaucracy or a militant stance on identity politics. To the dinosaurs trying to haul normal life into the culture wars:deal with it.
The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories,analysis and insights.Sign up here.