Washington, DC is a city full of museums, but works by male artists dominate the galleries. Except for one museum on New York Avenue, NW: The National Museum of Women in the Arts.
“Our overall mission is to champion women in the arts,” said senior curator Ginny Trainor. “Historically, this means exhibiting and showing art by women from the past – of which there were many – and making sure they are not forgotten again or written out of history again, to preserve their legacy.”
The mission extends to championing contemporary artists, Treenor added, seeking to “really lean into advocating for women’s equality in the art world, as well as supporting up-and-coming artists and giving them the resources and the platform that they need.” .
Historically, women have been underrepresented in art museums, Wilhelmina Cole Holladay learned after a trip to Europe in the 1970s with her husband, Wallace. The two travel to Europe and are taken with the works of Clara Pieterse, a 17th-century Flemish painter who specialized in still lifes.
When they return home, the Holladays realize they can’t find any information about Peters or other historical women in art.
“They made it their mission to collect art by women, and the core of their collection came to the museum in 1987,” Trainor said. “And we opened our doors and have been here ever since.”
The museum began with the goal of reintroducing women into art history, “which is great and necessary and necessary,” added Trainor. “But over the years, as our mission has kind of changed and evolved, it’s really become advocacy.”
Advocacy includes shining a light on the disparities women still face in the art world. A 2019 study of 18 major U.S. art museums found that male artists made up 87 percent of the representation at those museums, and that 85 percent of the artists represented were white. Another study found that only 11% of acquisitions between 2008 and 2019 included work by women artists. The museum started a social media campaign in 2016, asking every March during Women’s History Month if people could name #5WomenArtists to bring attention to the fact that women are not treated equally in the art world.
“There’s still a big gender disparity,” Trainor said, adding that the museum also prioritizes works by transgender and non-binary artists in its displays.
“Part of me wishes we weren’t needed anymore, but again, when you look at the numbers, it tells a different story,” Trainor said. “There’s still a really big disparity, and we’ll be here as long as it takes.”
Temple of the Arts
Inside the galleries you will find works by artists such as Amy Sherald, famous for her famous portrait of Michelle Obama, or Lee Krasner, who is often called “Jackson Pollack’s wife”. Frida Kahlo is on display, as is Bert Morisot. There are over 6,000 objects in the museum’s collection.
The building the museum calls home was once the headquarters of the Freemasons, a fraternal order in Washington, DC. Treanor calls it a “nice irony” — when the building was originally built, women weren’t allowed on the premises.
“But now we’ve turned it into something like — I hesitate to use the word temple, but at one point it was a temple — but now we’ve turned it into a temple of the arts.”
The museum reopened last fall after a two-year, $70 million renovation that expanded and renovated the gallery space, created a new teaching space with a state-of-the-art library and research center, and improved the building’s infrastructure.
“The renovation was a long time coming,” Trainor said. “This moment of reopening has really become a way for us to reintroduce ourselves to the public and kind of get back on the radar of Washingtonians in particular, to our local audience, but also on a global scale.”
During the pandemic, the museum began organizing “Chats at Five,” a virtual program every Friday night to connect with art enthusiasts who were confined at home in isolation. The museum welcomes school groups and admission is free on the first Sunday of the month. The museum also launched NMWA nights, a pilot program that stays open late on the third Wednesday of the month.
“I hope that when people leave this museum for the first time, and I hope they come back to it, they come away with the idea that there have always been women artists, there will always be women artists. And it’s a place where you can come and see some of the best examples of things that women have done in the last five centuries,” Trainor said.
As for how museum-goers across the country or the world can celebrate women artists?
“If you see women’s work on the wall, call it out!” Trainer said. “Celebrate it, Instagram it, tag the museum, tag us. We’re really not interested in shaming anyone for not having enough women on their walls, but rather celebrating the women artists who are showing.”
For more information about the museum, its collections and its educational programs, click here.
