Daniel Belasco Hosts Lecture on All-Women Exhibitions

On Nov. 12, the Department of Art History hosted a guest lecture called “All Women Exhibitions: An Emerging Method of Art Historical Research” by Dr. Daniel Belasco, former curator of the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. Belasco’s lecture focused on the methods that he used to conduct research for his new book, “Women Artists in Midcentury America: A History in Ten Exhibitions.”

Since becoming a curator, Belasco has been interested in “the exhibition as a subject matter” because exhibitions are “where art history is made.” When Belasco became interested in the role that gender played in the art world during the 1950s through ’70s, he chose to examine it through the lens of all-women exhibitions – exhibitions solely featuring female artists. Throughout history, female artists have been left out of the mainstream art world, and rather than force their way into male dominated spaces, many of them “created their own opportunities” and formed their own art societies that exhibited their work. 

All-women art shows date back centuries – one of the oldest all-women art exhibitions was held in 1857 by the Society of Women Artists in London. Though there have been many more all-women exhibitions since then, the history of these exhibitions has been underresearched. Many of the exhibitions that Belasco was interested in had never been studied before, so he had to examine primary sources to find the information that he was looking for. 

Belasco looked through catalogs, brochures and press releases about exhibitions throughout the time period he was interested in, and ended up finding dozens of all-women exhibitions. In his book, he focused on 10 of these exhibitions, which he wanted to be as diverse as possible. His exhibitions vary in media form, ranging from painting exhibitions to exhibitions featuring photography and prints. Belasco wanted to include exhibitions that were racially diverse, which he admitted was difficult. However, he did manage to include exhibitions that featured Black and Asian American female artists. 

Belasco’s research shows the complexity of the mid-century American female art world; a world that spanned the continent – from San Francisco to Philadelphia – and varied immensely in subject matter. Ruth Asawa’s looped-wire structures differ greatly from the surrealist paintings featured in Peggy Guggenheim’s “31 Women” exhibition in 1944. Female artists are not a monolith, and Belasco wants his book to teach people that female art history is just as rich as male art history. 

Art history professor Reva Wolf described Belasco’s book as a “perfect fusion” in that it provides both an examination of women’s roles in art history and an analysis of exhibitions themselves. 

Third-year art history major Keara Nelsen said that most of her art history classes are male dominated which “gets uninteresting.” It was only when she took a contemporary art class which had a curriculum written by Wolf that she started to learn about art made by female artists. Nelsen said that learning about art from diverse perspectives “makes education better” and allows for a full view of history.