The Royal Academy’s first female Keeper, Eileen Cooper, has called for positive discrimination for women artists to address the dominance of men in the visual arts.
Speaking on Radio 4’s PM news programme yesterday, Cooper said: “Nationally, many more women than men are studying fine art – it’s worrying that it doesn’t translate to enough women being represented in major exhibitions and in galleries and museums. It’s really quite shocking that here we are in 2014 and there’s still a huge imbalance.”
Cooper added that she was “sick of women’s voices not being heard” and argued that there is a particular female sensibility that women artists bring to art.
The gallerist Rebecca Hossack, who has two West London galleries and a space in New York, was also interviewed for the PM story, along with the artist Holly Frean. Hossack disagreed with Cooper on positive discrimination and quotas for women. “It has got to be on the quality of their work and I would never choose someone on their gender,” she said.
Hossack agreed, however, that women in the art world do face discrimination. “I do think that women have a really hard time of it in the arts,” she said. “The men in suits who control the market and decide who’s going to be hyped up and go into auction and be bought for lots of money and turned into a commodity, they do not look at women artists, they do not consider the concerns of women artists… I know there is discrimination there.”
Male dominance
Frean said that, although she was against positive discrimination in terms of the work shown at the Royal Academy and elsewhere, she did believe that in terms of judging panels and prizes there should be a quota for men and women.
The Royal Academy itself is a bastion of male dominance, with male Royal Academicians outnumbering women by nearly five to one. “It’s something we’re talking about very openly at the Royal Academy,” said Cooper.
Asked whether positive discrimination might lead people to say that a work was only in an RA show because it was by a woman, Cooper said it was not something that concerned her. “If they want to say that, let them. The thing is, a whole generation of people will be seeing work that hasn’t been seen before, and I think that’s important.”
You can listen to the interview here, around 52 minutes in to the programme. The 28 August edition of Radio 4’s PM will be available until 3 September
