Weekly Assignment: What will it take to get more art by women in major museums? (Wk 16)

That's the big question. Here are some troubling statistics.

• Many museums' collections consist of only 5%-10% works by women artists.
• In 2006, only 23 percent of solo exhibitions in NYC art galleries were by women artists
• Only 30% of Art Review's "Power 100" are women in the arts.
• 80% of students at the School of Visual Arts are female. 70-80% of the artists in galleries and museums are male.

Can the art world change? If so, how? Is it a matter of the way we educate artists? The ways art schools work? Do we need to revise art history textbooks to include more female artists from the past? Do we need more special exhibitions of work by female artists? Solo or group shows? Does changing these statistics mean changing society (how artists are valued and compensated or how childcare is provided)?

Try to think of specific examples of what solutions might look like. Try to say why your proposed steps would work, not just what your plan is.

Guerrilla Girls Poster

Weekly Assignment: The Origins of Pleasure

This weekly assignment will continue a discussion started last week about the value of art. Reflect on the video below. Do you see things as this video describes? How do you determine the value of art? Is value measured in money? How do you think the monetary value of art should be determined?

Weekly Assignment: The Modern World

Watch one or both film clips from Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (1936). What statement does it make about early 20th century life? Does the movie suggest that technology makes our lives easier or better? Do you agree? Use examples from the film to support your ideas.

Some Historical Context

Telephone Invented: 1876

Lightbulb Invented: 1879
First Motion Picture Film: 1895
First Airplane Flight: 1903
Ford Model T first produced: 1908

Image Bank: Impressionism to Modernism

Here is the image bank for this unit.

Weekly Assignment: Gertrude Stein & Pablo Picasso

cub·ism/ˈkyo͞obizəm/

Noun: An early 20th-century style and movement in art, esp. painting, in which perspective with a single viewpoint was abandoned and use was made of simple geometric shapes, interlocking planes, and, later, collage. It was created by Picasso and Braque.

Listen to Gertrude Stein's poem "If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso".

What parallels can you find between the experience of listening to Stein's poem and the experience of viewing this painting by Picasso? What aspects of Picasso's painting style are echoed in Stein's language? Include observations about both works in your responses.

Picasso: Portrait of Ambrose Vollard, 1910