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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 432 968 HE 032 676 AUTHOR Dietrich, Linnea; Hurd, Diane Smith TITLE Art: Discipline Analysis. Women in the CurriculumSeries. INSTITUTION Towson Univ., Baltimore, MD. National Center for Curriculum Transformation Resources on Women. SPONS AGENCY Ford Foundation, New York, NY.; Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (ED), Washington, DC. ISBN ISBN-1-885303-17-3 PUB DATE 1997-00-00 NOTE 39p.; For related documents in this series, see HE 032 663-689. AVAILABLE FROM Towson University, 8000 York Road, Baltimore, MD 21252;Tel: 800-847-9922 (Toll Free); Fax: 410-830-3482; Web site: http://www.towson.edu/ncctrw ($7). PUB TYPE Information Analyses (070) EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Art; Art Education; *Art History; *College Curriculum; *College Instruction; Ethnicity; Females; Feminism; *Feminist Criticism; Higher Education; Race; *Sex Bias; Sex Differences; Sex Fairness; Teaching Methods; Theories IDENTIFIERS Gender Issues ABSTRACT This essay examines the ways in which art and art history, as disciplines, have been influenced byfeminist scholarship and research into the areas of gender, sexuality, and race. It explains thatbefore the interventions of feminist art historians and theorists of art,beginning in the 1970s, the history of art was conceived of and taught as achronological sequence of masters and monuments in Western art.The essay goes on to note that a feminist history of art emerged in the 1970s, led bythe publication of Linda Nochlin's essay "Why Have There Been No Great WomenArtists?" It explains that feminism, art, and arts activism have gone handin hand since the early days of the contemporary women's movement. In 1980sfeminist art history continued to investigate women's achievements, as well asfocusing on challenging the traditional assumptions of art history itself;in the 1990s authors and publishers were attempting to include womenartists in survey texts. The feminist perspective has also influenced pedagogy,leading to more interaction and collaboration between teachers and students.(Contains 125 references.) (MDM) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** isciplii e An i lysis Linne Dietric Nli miniversity e Sitird Art .ca e y f Ciiicinnpit i MUM' NM U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) gThis document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. t0 Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. 41) BEST COPYAVAILABLE °Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. 2 Women theCurriculum ART Discipline Analysis Linnea Dietrich Miami University Diane Smith Hurd Art Academy of Cincinnati National Center for Curriculum Transformation Resources on Women 1997 3 National Center for Curriculum Transformation Resourceson Women Institute for Teaching and Researchon Women Towson University 8000 York Road Baltimore, MD 21252 Phone: (410) 830-3944 Fax: (410) 830-3469 E-mail: [email protected] http://www.towson.eduincctrw Copyright © 1997 National Center for Curriculum Transformation Resourceson Women All rights reserved. No part of this publicationmay be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronicor mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or byany information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the National Center for Curriculum Transformation Resourceson Women. The National Center for Curriculum Transformation Resourceson Women is partially supported by grants from The Ford Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education, Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, whose support is gratefully acknowledged. The viewpoints expressed herein, however, do not necessarily reflect those of the funding agencies. Printed on recycled paper by Uptown Press, Baltimore, MD ISBN 1-885303-17-3 Artiii PREFACE Since the 1970s feminist and multicultural scholar- ship has been challenging the traditional content, organiza- tion, methodologies, and epistemologies of the academic disciplines. By now this scholarship is formidable in both quantity and quality and in its engagement of complex issues. The National Center for Curriculum Transforma- tion Resources on Women is therefore publishing a series of essays that provide brief, succinct overviews of the new scholarship. Outstanding scholars in the disciplines gener- ously agreed to write the essays, which are intended to help faculty who want to revise courses in light of the new in- formation and perspectives. Each essay is accompanied by a bibliography that includes references for further reading, resources for the classroom, and electronic resources. Elaine Hedges Series Editor 5 Towson University, Baltimore, MD Art 1 ART Before the interventions of feminist historians and theorists of art, beginning in the 1970s, the history of art was conceived and taught as achronological sequence of masters and monumentsthe great menand worksin Western art, and, more rarely, in Eastern art. InWestern art, this sequence consisted of a canonof "great" works which emphasized classical antiquity and theItalian Re- naissance as the most important periods 'and as thebearers of what was thought to be "our" culture. Such areading of the history of art, however, tended to neglect otherperiods, including pre-Greek art (prehistoric, Egyptian, Mesopota- mian), the Middle Ages, and Modern art. Mostneglected were arts not recognized asparticipating in the Western traditionAfrican, Islamic, Oceanic, and South American art, and the art of marginalized orcolonized peoples, in- cluding Native Americans, African Americans,Asian Americans, and of course, women, who were doubly mar- ginalized if they came from one of these latter groups. Those outside the mainstream were perhaps not deliber- ately excluded, but because of the pervasivenessof the Western patriarchal vision, they simply did not count.The standard of inclusion was "quality," and "quality" was a self-serving term meaning what was familiar to aselect fewwhite, European males. Judging by the survey texts in art history published before the early 1990s, art was created only by men,and although women appeared in the reproductions inthese 6 Towson University, Baltimore, MD 2Discipline Analysis texts, they were seen as objects in paintingsand sculptures, not as creators in their own right. Inpart due to the wide- spread linking ofwomen with nature and men with culture, women artists who did productive workwere excluded from the "master narrative"as insignificant. Often they were omitted because including them disrupted thecon- ventional flow of the story. Their exclusionwas also some- times justified by arguments suggestingthat women were innately inferior tomen in terms of creative ability. Inter- estingly enough, Helen Gardner, authorof one of the most popular survey books, Art Through theAges, now in its tenth edition (the first appeared in1926), had noted the exclusion of women in preparing for herthird edition, and she had characterized herown work as too "Europocen- tric." However, World War II and herdeath in 1946 pre- vented her revisions from being published.Since her death her book has been revised byteams of scholars. In the 1990s, authors and publishers haveattempted to include women artists in existingsurvey texts, with varying degrees of success. Someappear to have added a few women artists to their histories ina grudging bow to political correctness. Others, like. MarilynStokstad, et al., in Art History, give greater attentionto a number of women artists and discuss thereasons for their previous exclu- sions. Very soon,surveys of world art will appear which discuss art history froma feminist perspective, treating women artists more fully and dealing with issues of how women have been represented in art and why. Thesenew survey texts depend on the substantial scholarship pub- lished in the past twenty-sixyears, which has revealed the existence and creativity ofwomen artists who were for- merly lost or excluded. This scholarship,discussed more fully in the followingpages, has shown that women artists were often known in their own time periods but forgotten later, or that their workwas attributed to their more fa- s:. National Center for Curriculum TransformationResources on Women Art3 mous male relatives or counterparts, for example, Marietta Robusti (Tintoretto's daughter) and Judith Leyster (whose work was attributed to Frans Hals). Feminist scholarship in art history has further dem- onstrated that social and institutional barriers prevented women from pursuing careers in art because awoman's place was thought to be in the home, not the studio. None- theless, women did pursue art, and, as more and more women are recovered, the whole historyof art has been expanded and rewritten, not just to accommodate a few more artists, but because the knowledge of womenartists we have now gained has changed our verynotion of what art history and history in general is. History is not a seam- less narrative chronicling the lives and work of a selected few, but a richer and more complex story of what the con- ditions and purposes of artistic production actually were and are. We could describe this as a paradigm shift, a shift from "art history"

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