Race has been a big issue in the art community as well as the rest of the world. Statistically it is very unlikely for a person of color to enter into the museum system over white curators, engineers, directors, etc. Even artists of color struggle to get their works into museums, completely unrelated to their quality of work. Usually the works of art that are put up are the ones that are stereotypical; the savagely barbaric African art or the ethnically fetishized Orientalism. The works of art and the ethics that museums perpetuate only prolongs this intolerance as museums are a reflection of culture and society. Kymberly Pinder speaks about this subject in her book, Race-ing Art History: Critical Readings in Race and Art History, and how racism
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Women are constantly thought of as lesser in comparison to men. The art world is no different. Museums have actively denied the labor and works of women in the art community. The amount of men completely outweighs and outshines the women in museums. There isn’t a lack of abundance of women curators, directors, and artists in the community, it’s just that they are constantly undervalued to their male counter parts. This inequality of the sexes has sparked multiple activist movements against this sexism in the art world. The feminist artist, Lynn Hershman Leeson, made a film, !Women Art Revolution, documenting the struggles and triumphs of women in the art community. In the movie she conducted several interviews with fellow female artists and curators, asking them to explain their experience with sexism in the American art community. In an interview that Leeson conducted with fellow artist, Howardena Pindell, Pindell explains her struggle with censorship and getting her work into museums by simply saying, “It’s hard to know you’re being censored when you’re not in a museum to begin with,” (Pindell, W.A.R., np). Pindell says that she never knew whether or not if she was being censored because her works of art were never taken into the walls of any museum in the first place. She goes on to talk about her experiences talking about the embarrassing acts she had to preform to attempt to get her works into museums,
Women are constantly thought of as lesser in comparison to men. The art world is no different. Museums have actively denied the labor and works of women in the art community. The amount of men completely outweighs and outshines the women in museums. There isn’t a lack of abundance of women curators, directors, and artists in the community, it’s just that they are constantly undervalued to their male counter parts. This inequality of the sexes has sparked multiple activist movements against this sexism in the art world. The feminist artist, Lynn Hershman Leeson, made a film, !Women Art Revolution, documenting the struggles and triumphs of women in the art community. In the movie she conducted several interviews with fellow female artists and curators, asking them to explain their experience with sexism in the American art community. In an interview that Leeson conducted with fellow artist, Howardena Pindell, Pindell explains her struggle with censorship and getting her work into museums by simply saying, “It’s hard to know you’re being censored when you’re not in a museum to begin with,” (Pindell, W.A.R., np). Pindell says that she never knew whether or not if she was being censored because her works of art were never taken into the walls of any museum in the first place. She goes on to talk about her experiences talking about the embarrassing acts she had to preform to attempt to get her works into museums,