If you ask someone to name five artists, they will likely name prominent male artists, but how many people can list five women artists? Throughout March’s Women’s History Month, we will be joining institutions around the world to answer this very question posed by the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NWMA). We will be featuring a woman artist every day this month, and highlighting artists in our current exhibition Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection which explores a wide range of art-making, focusing on enduring political subjects—encompassing gender, race, and class—that remain relevant today. The show is on view until March 31, 2019.
Together we hope to draw attention to the gender and race imbalance in the art world, inspire conversation and awareness, and hopefully add a few more women to everyone’s lists.
Over a forty-year career, Beverly Buchanan explored the relationship between personal, historical, and geographical memory. Buchanan’s series of small-scale shack sculptures are ruminations on the aesthetics of southern vernacular architecture. Monuments to impermanence, Buchanan’s shacks memorialize quarters for enslaved people, tenant farmer dwellings, and churches, which often fell into ruin while plantation houses were preserved as historical sites.
Beverly Buchanan (Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina 1940–2015 Ann Arbor, Michigan) Lillington, NC Harnett Co., 2007. Acrylic on foam core. William K. Jacobs, Jr. Fund, 2017.32.2