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Published Aug 15, 2010

MARK DAVIS/THE WORLD-HERALD

Tom and Mary Powell of Euclid, Ohio, visit the “Better Half, Better Twelfth” exhibit at the Sheldon Museum of Art in Lincoln last week. In a
cutting-edge move, the Sheldon this year has dedicated most of its exhibit space to female artists, which has meant storing works by most of its male
artists to free up space.

LINCOLN — What's that adage about art imitating life?

The Sheldon Museum of Art has found that — just as in business, politics, sports and other realms of power and influence — it is
dominated by men. Male artists in the Sheldon's 12,000-piece permanent collection outnumber their female counterparts by nearly 12 to
1.

To expose that gap, the Sheldon this year has dedicated most of its exhibit space (nearly 85 percent) to female artists, starting with its
own. In a two-part exhibit self-consciously titled “Better Half, Better Twelfth,” the Sheldon is featuring a range of works — paintings,
prints, photographs and sculpture — by women artists as famous as Georgia O'Keeffe and as up-and-coming as post-representational
painter Jennifer Scott McLaughlin.

The museum also is showcasing other works by women through special exhibits, including a traveling first-ever show of female pop
artists from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, on display through September. Andy Warhol's name is synonymous with the
movement that incorporated iconic images from movies, advertising and daily life. Marisol, whose wooden John Wayne is part of the
traveling exhibit, is not nearly as widely known.

The result is an informative trip through the last century-plus of American art with works reflecting the same depth, range and power of
better-known and better-displayed male artists.

What the Sheldon has done apparently is cutting edge. Its director, Jorge “Daniel” Veneciano, says it is the first U.S. museum he's aware
of that has stored most of its male artists — including the popular Brancusi, Rothko and Hopper — to free up space for lesser-known
women.

He said he thinks the museum is the first to curate an exhibit that in essence is a critical review of museum practice.

“Most museums are in the business of celebrating their collections. We do that, but we also want to learn from it,” Veneciano said.

A handful of art museums in the world, notably the Centre Pompidou in Paris, recently have made significant efforts to highlight
women's art. Before the Sheldon show, the Pompidou was the only institution to devote its display space to women artists in its
collection for a year. The show, called “elles@pompidou” was so popular that the modern and contemporary art museum has extended
it.

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Veneciano visited the Pompidou for inspiration.

Rutgers University art professor Judith K. Brodsky said the Sheldon was the only U.S. museum she could think of devoting so much
time and space to women's art.

“To make a whole museum a display of women artists and have that be up for a whole year,” said Brodsky, a former Veneciano
colleague. “I have to say ... Sheldon is the first to do that in the U.S. I really can't think of another one.”

The Washington, D.C.-based National Museum of Women in the Arts could not confirm whether Sheldon was the first.

But an artist with the New York-based feminist art activist group Guerrilla Girls was familiar with the Sheldon's effort and said it was
unusual.

“Museums have lagged behind,” said the woman, who, in Guerrilla Girl custom, would speak only under the pseudonym of a dead
woman artist, in this case, Kathe Kollwitz.

“Kollwitz” said the art world is playing catch-up, and while interest appears to be piquing for feminist art, museum shows are “pretty
much business as usual.”

“Most solo shows at museums are by white male artists,” she said. “It's getting better for women, but it's still not great.”

Women long have contributed to art, but their contributions have been limited because of access and perception of value.

Brodsky, co-founder of the Institute for Women and Art at Rutgers and for a print center there that bears her name, gave these reasons:
Women historically were excluded from art academies, weren't allowed to draw nudes and were kept from teaching.

Some women got breaks through the famous men they were connected to — Frida Kahlo and husband Diego Rivera, O'Keeffe and
husband Alfred Stieglitz. Lee Krasner's name is not as widely known as her husband's: Jackson Pollock. But she painted in drip style
before he did. One of her works is on display at the Sheldon.

Fewer women in the art pipeline have meant fewer women in museums.

Art historian and critic Linda Nochlin famously asked in a 1971 essay in ArtNews magazine, “Why Have There Been No Great Women
Artists?”

Her answer, in part, was “the entire romantic, elitist, individual-glorifying and monograph-producing substructure upon which the
profession of art history is based.”

Women's art continues to be undervalued, said Brodsky. When critical acclaim is equal, she said, women's art sells for a fraction of what
men's art gets at auction; museums backbench women's art, putting it in the basement or not showing it at all; and socio-cultural
reactions to gender color perceptions of value, with women's works being viewed as less-than.

Things slowly improved and, for the past several decades, half the master's in fine arts population has been female.

“It's better but it's not all the way yet,” Brodsky said.

Other efforts over the years have aimed at raising the profile of women in art: The National Museum of Women in the Arts, the only
museum devoted solely to works by women, opened in 1987 in Washington, D.C. In 2007, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los
Angeles curated WACK!, an exhibition of feminist art featuring 120 artists from around the world. The Brooklyn Museum opened a
center for feminist art, which houses “The Dinner Party,” a massive 1970s artwork honoring women.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York, deemed the world's best collection of modern art, was lambasted several years ago in New
York Magazine for its poor representation of women. Between 3 and 5 percent of objects on view were done by women, which writer
Jerry Saltz called a “failure of the imagination,” “a moral emergency” and “apartheid.”

This past spring, that museum featured two permanent-collection shows with nearly all female artists. In June, the museum published a
512-page tome called “Modern Women: Women Artists at the Museum of Modern Art.”

Veneciano, the Sheldon director, said the act of culling women-made art from the Sheldon's collection exposed holes — like sculpture
— a medium that historically has drawn fewer women artists than, say, printmaking.

The Sheldon is hoping to address that in part by commissioning a major work for the Great Hall by Niho Kozuru, a sculptor who works
with translucent cast rubber.

Veneciano said it would bring color and vibrancy to the collection.

The Great Hall at the Sheldon, on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus, is where a visitor first notices the change.

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Gone is the giant marble phallas “Princesse X” by the late Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi. In its place is Judith Shea's “Shield,”
a 1989 bronze work of a sheath dress that shows the subtle curves of a woman's body against the white travertine marble of the museum
wall.

The sculpture is included in the first round of the “Better Half, Better Twelfth” exhibit that features more than 100 works by about as
many artists, organized by theme and medium.

Pioneer women artists, defined as those who defied social customs or family prohibitions, are grouped together. Then there are sections
on representational art, photography, printmaking, sculpture and non-representational art.

Women artists appear to tackle the woman's form differently than their male counterparts, said Veneciano. Nudes are depicted less
erotically and with more irony.

The exhibit includes a bronze Elizabeth Catlett sculpture of a woman thinking.

The “Seductive Subversion” section is a fun walk through 1960s popular culture: A box of Tide in a wool hooked rug by Dorothy
Grebenak; an oil painting of Chubby Checker doing the twist right off the canvas by Rosalyn Drexler; John Wayne's likeness by Marisol
burnished into a wooden sculpture that looks like part child's toy, part carnival ride, part joke.

But it's a bitter joke, as the Martha Rosler photo-montage suggests: Here stands a woman in a hallway where pop art hangs. She is
vacuuming.

The first part of the exhibit began in April and will continue until November, when the second starts. That round will continue through
next April. Sharon Kennedy, curator of cultural and civic engagement for Sheldon, said the museum has aimed to have a year of the
woman.

“It was time,” she said, “to catch up.”

Contact the writer:

444-1136, [email protected]

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