The Women are alright
Howdy!
It is obvious that Nicolas Mavrikakis is a bandwagon jumper. On September 21, Jerry Saltz wrote a very interesting article in the Village Voice about the amount of women artists exhibiting in New York. It got republished (as all his columns are) on October 2 on the website Artnet.com. So this week, Mr. Mavrikakis complains about the lack of women exhibiting at the Musee d'art contmporain. All because he thinks that the Rodney Graham show that is currently up, is all about men.
One of the things that made Mr. Saltz's article so interesting was that he did include some historical data in his article 'since 2000 only 14 percent of the Guggenheim's solo shows of living artists have been devoted to women.' And he also made full use of a bunch of museum's collections to make his point. Might be one of the reasons why he is considered a good writer.
Mr. Mavrikakis on the other hand seems to be incapable of remembering anything. Yes he is correct that there are no solo women's shows scheduled for the next couple of months. However in 2005 there were more solo shows by women than there were by men, and going back to 2003 at least a third of the solo shows have been by women and as many as half have been by women. As the museum has only recently instituted a 'no group show' policy, I'd love to go back and look at the groups shows as well and compare how many women to how many men were in each one - but I have other work that needs to be done.
In a nutshell, Nicolas Mavrikakis is not only a bandwagon jumper, but he is also wrong.
It is obvious that Nicolas Mavrikakis is a bandwagon jumper. On September 21, Jerry Saltz wrote a very interesting article in the Village Voice about the amount of women artists exhibiting in New York. It got republished (as all his columns are) on October 2 on the website Artnet.com. So this week, Mr. Mavrikakis complains about the lack of women exhibiting at the Musee d'art contmporain. All because he thinks that the Rodney Graham show that is currently up, is all about men.
One of the things that made Mr. Saltz's article so interesting was that he did include some historical data in his article 'since 2000 only 14 percent of the Guggenheim's solo shows of living artists have been devoted to women.' And he also made full use of a bunch of museum's collections to make his point. Might be one of the reasons why he is considered a good writer.
Mr. Mavrikakis on the other hand seems to be incapable of remembering anything. Yes he is correct that there are no solo women's shows scheduled for the next couple of months. However in 2005 there were more solo shows by women than there were by men, and going back to 2003 at least a third of the solo shows have been by women and as many as half have been by women. As the museum has only recently instituted a 'no group show' policy, I'd love to go back and look at the groups shows as well and compare how many women to how many men were in each one - but I have other work that needs to be done.
In a nutshell, Nicolas Mavrikakis is not only a bandwagon jumper, but he is also wrong.
posted by Zeke's, the Montreal Art Gallery on 12.10.06
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