In the Company of Women

“In the Company of Women: Women Artists from the Collection” showcases 20th- and 21st-century artworks from Phoenix Art Museum’s collection created exclusively by women. In an era of contemporary phenomena such as the #MeToo movement and in light of growing awareness of gender inequality in many contexts, including art museums, this exhibition is an engagement with feminist scholarship that, for decades, has aimed to provide a more complete history of artistic production.

Liliana Porter, Red with Mirror, 2000, cibachrome.  
Collection of Phoenix Art Museum

The show was inspired in part by the 1976 Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibition “Women Artists: 1550-1950,” the first large-scale museum exhibition in the United States exclusively featuring women artists. Curated by renowned art historians Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin, “Women Artists”was revolutionary in the way it utilized the museum setting to explore barriers that women artists have historically faced. For example, from the 16th to the 19th centuries, women were barred from studying the nude model, which formed the basis for academic training and representation, despite women’s bodies often serving as the objects of artistic representation and consumption.

“In the Company of Women” showcases an array of styles and media, with nearly 50 works on view by Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe, Faith Ringgold, Erica Deeman, Daniela Rossell, Cindy Sherman, Marguerite Zorach and three local artists, Annie Lopez, Angela Ellsworth and Geny Dignac. The display creates a new context for some of the museum’s most iconic pieces, prompting conversations about gender inequality, the systematic exclusion of women from mainstream art circles and the idea that artistic production must be understood in the context of society at large.

In the Company of Women: Women Artists from the Collection

Through August 12

Phoenix Art Museum, 1625 N. Central Ave., Phoenix

For more information, visit phxart.org.