Currently on at Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham: Celebrating Sculptress Anne Seymour Damer 17 October 2021 - 3 January 2022.
Damer was the god-daughter and heiress of Horace Walpole, who left her the house remodelled by him him in 'queer gothic' style. During her life, Anne Damer challenged gender roles not only in relation to her artistic ( Read more... )

I.e., 'She did it - but - '
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Early scientists - tracing the contribution of female alchemists: “The female alchemist takes on different guises in the writings of these women: she is a medical practitioner and distiller; a religious meditator; a woman poet-maker; a female friend; patroness; a transformative widow-poet; and spiritual visionary,” ( Read more... )

Joanna Koerten’s Scissor-Cut Works Were Compared to Michelangelo: And then, snip by snip, she was cut out of the frame of Renaissance art history: Oil painting, along with sculpture, was seen as the true medium of “high art.” Anything else smacked of kitsch or handicraft. Yet the professional world of oil painting, with its strict, exclusionary ( Read more... )

Are we surprised at this? are we? His fair lady: how George Bernard Shaw’s wife played a vital role in his masterworks. Charlotte’s influence has been downplayed, says a new book on how women are written out of history.
Oh gee, I see, when I go and look at the blurb for the forthcoming book that this relates to, that I had a very minor interaction ( Read more... )

'Why are there no women great artists?' - okay, we know, do we not, my dearios, that there are great women artists? - but there might be more. One of the reasons why there are not as many as there might be could be that they felt they had Other Priorities (not necessarily Being A Muse). I was already apprised of the not necessarily softer side of ( Read more... )

National Portrait Gallery to feature more women in its collection: Curators will increase representation of female artists and sitters and seek overlooked stories: yay, I guess? Having been to various exhibitions there on particular groups of women (e.g the Bluestocking circle) and particular artists (Cindy Sherman) either being or making art. A ( Read more... )

This comes top because, wow, triumph of commonsense, how is it that this can be? National Trust report on slavery links did not break charity law, regulator says. The National Trust did not breach charity law by publishing a report that found itself at the centre of a “culture war” after it made links between its country house properties and the UK ( Read more... )

Augusta Fells Savage, a talented sculptor who had faced obstacles due to her sex and race at every turn: [L]ittle of Savage's work survives today. Because she couldn't afford bronze, she often had to make her sculptures out of plaster; most of these have crumbled over time. Other works, like The Harp, were destroyed because they could not be moved ( Read more... )

I'm trying to think if writers ever have/had this problem: What’s in a surname? The female artists lost to history because they got married. Because in the case of writers, they just kept on publishing under the (male/gender neutral or just generally not identifiable to her daytime persona) name whatever their matrimonial or non-matrimonal ups and ( Read more... )

Obituary of Maureen Colquhoun, Crusading Labour politician who was the first openly gay MP: Among the many issues for which she campaigned were the abolition of women’s prisons, abortion on demand, creche facilities at political conferences and the decriminalisation of prostitution.
She was outed by the Daily Mail gossip columnist and refused to ( Read more... )