How are the values of women portrayed in art exhibitions in museums?
Tuesday, 9 January 2018
Saturday, 6 January 2018
3 Days at the NPG 20th Century Gallery.
I've had a very interesting 3 days at NPG, looking at the values inherent in the 20th Century Gallery. It quite surprised me! When I first went to the newly rehung gallery in November 2017, about 6 weeks ago, I was quite impressed. I thought it was an improvement on the last hanging. Now I am not so sure.
I have gathered data about values I perceive (as a white, straight, middle aged, urban woman, previously working in manual industry, with a broad knowledge of the arts) in the images shown, and from the artwork statement alongside. I gathered the data on Schwartz's Table of Basic Values, in a scattergram format.
What I have found is a huge tendency for the values identified, to cluster on the left hand side of the table, whether the sitter is male or female. I've not analysed the data yet, so I can't say whether there is a tendency for the gender of the artist to impact on this.
I noted a couple of anomolies in the artwork descriptions - for example, the terms Actress and Actor were used to describe female sitters. Sometimes women were described by, and made significant, by the men they were associated with, but men were not made significant by their women!
I had a chat with a museum attendant, Ben. (Young, white, male, fine art graduate). He said the portrait of Emmeline Pankhurst had been moved the previous day, to be part of an exhibition about Votes for Women (opening 23 Jan - must attend). I asked him about selection criteria for the new hanging. He did not know. I mentioned that Beatrix Potter had been removed, and Roald Dahl was newly hung. I noted their similarities and differences - both children's authors, each with a significant other contribution to society (BP was a founder of National Trust, major landowner in the Lake District and environmentalist; RD was a wartime RAF pilot). Her image was soft focus and outdoor, made her look something like Mrs Tiggywinkle, and rather like the illustrations in her books. His image was in harsh, bright colours, and in uniform, indoors.
I asked Ben about whether he thought any art media were gendered. This puzzled him, but when I asked him whether he thought cigarette cards were gendered. (There was a selection of cigarette cards depicting WW1 Victoria Cross holders). He said he had studied cigarette packaging as a student, and that women had always been used in artwork to promote sales. He seemed to completely miss the point that cigarette sales in the early 20th C were targeted at men, and the cards were promoting the achievements of men, in this exhibition. This exhibition also made the point that for women to be seen smoking in the early 20th C was seen to be very daring. It is my opinion (not yet backed up by data) that cigarette cards are gendered male. I suspect (but not yet backed up again) that the people who commissioned the cards, and the artists of the cards, were men.
Ben said the NPG was a conservative organisation that was unlikely to be innovative. I found this quite astonishing. I said they had had Grayson Perry's Who Am I? exhibition that had dramatically increased footfall, and that museums were striving to increase footfall. The big museums were partly Government funded and employed policy makers. So therefore their policies should be moving away from the conservative end of the spectrum, towards the innovative. I think I scared him!!
OK. Now to turn the raw data into some tables and scattergrams. The hard work begins.
I have gathered data about values I perceive (as a white, straight, middle aged, urban woman, previously working in manual industry, with a broad knowledge of the arts) in the images shown, and from the artwork statement alongside. I gathered the data on Schwartz's Table of Basic Values, in a scattergram format.
 |
| Schwartz's Table of Basic Values |
I noted a couple of anomolies in the artwork descriptions - for example, the terms Actress and Actor were used to describe female sitters. Sometimes women were described by, and made significant, by the men they were associated with, but men were not made significant by their women!
I had a chat with a museum attendant, Ben. (Young, white, male, fine art graduate). He said the portrait of Emmeline Pankhurst had been moved the previous day, to be part of an exhibition about Votes for Women (opening 23 Jan - must attend). I asked him about selection criteria for the new hanging. He did not know. I mentioned that Beatrix Potter had been removed, and Roald Dahl was newly hung. I noted their similarities and differences - both children's authors, each with a significant other contribution to society (BP was a founder of National Trust, major landowner in the Lake District and environmentalist; RD was a wartime RAF pilot). Her image was soft focus and outdoor, made her look something like Mrs Tiggywinkle, and rather like the illustrations in her books. His image was in harsh, bright colours, and in uniform, indoors.
I asked Ben about whether he thought any art media were gendered. This puzzled him, but when I asked him whether he thought cigarette cards were gendered. (There was a selection of cigarette cards depicting WW1 Victoria Cross holders). He said he had studied cigarette packaging as a student, and that women had always been used in artwork to promote sales. He seemed to completely miss the point that cigarette sales in the early 20th C were targeted at men, and the cards were promoting the achievements of men, in this exhibition. This exhibition also made the point that for women to be seen smoking in the early 20th C was seen to be very daring. It is my opinion (not yet backed up by data) that cigarette cards are gendered male. I suspect (but not yet backed up again) that the people who commissioned the cards, and the artists of the cards, were men.
Ben said the NPG was a conservative organisation that was unlikely to be innovative. I found this quite astonishing. I said they had had Grayson Perry's Who Am I? exhibition that had dramatically increased footfall, and that museums were striving to increase footfall. The big museums were partly Government funded and employed policy makers. So therefore their policies should be moving away from the conservative end of the spectrum, towards the innovative. I think I scared him!!
OK. Now to turn the raw data into some tables and scattergrams. The hard work begins.
Thursday, 4 January 2018
20th Century Gallery at NPG
I've decided to analyse the newly rehung 20th Century Gallery at NPG. Yesterday I looked at the chronologically last section of this gallery - World War II and Post War Renewal: 1939-1990. I chose this section as I did not want to be thinking about how many of the 121 images were left during my data collection!
I was gathering data about what values could be attributed to the sitter, and plotting these on Schwartz's Table of Basic Values. My categorisation of values evident has been based on gut feel - as is advised in the workplace when conducting Personality Questionnaires. I've made my decisions based on what is in the portrait, what's on the artist statement and what my general knowledge of the individual tells me.
Of the 121 artworks in the exhibition, only 40 relate to the last 50 years. 33% of images, for 50% of chronology. I've not analysed it yet, but the values seem to be primarily about achievement, power and hedonism. Minimal evidence of the other values on the scale.
I was gathering data about what values could be attributed to the sitter, and plotting these on Schwartz's Table of Basic Values. My categorisation of values evident has been based on gut feel - as is advised in the workplace when conducting Personality Questionnaires. I've made my decisions based on what is in the portrait, what's on the artist statement and what my general knowledge of the individual tells me.
Of the 121 artworks in the exhibition, only 40 relate to the last 50 years. 33% of images, for 50% of chronology. I've not analysed it yet, but the values seem to be primarily about achievement, power and hedonism. Minimal evidence of the other values on the scale.
Tuesday, 2 January 2018
John Berger - Ways of Seeing
John Berger wrote Ways of Seeing in 1972, and is still quoted nearly 50 years later. I've meant to read it for several years ... but never got round to it ... until I saw a copy of it in Cardiff Museum and Art Gallery.
'The photographer's way of seeing is reflecting in his choice of subject. The painter's way of seeing is reconstituted by the marks he makes on the canvas or paper.' p10
'When an image is presented as a work of art, ... it is affected by .. assumptions about art ... : Beauty, truth, genius, civilisation, form, status, taste etc'.
'The past is not for living in; it is a well of conclusions from which we d raw in order to act.'
'The art of the past is being mystified because a privilege minority is striving to invent a history which can retrospectively justify the role of the ruling classes'. (What a stonking quote!!) p11
He is quite scathing about monetary values of artwork and the consequences of easy reproducibility. He talks about Leonardo's cartoon of The Virgin and Child with St Anne and John the Baptist, only known to scholars until an American wanted to buy it for £2.3m (prior to 1972!).
'Now it hangs in a room by itself ... behind bulletproof glass. ... It has become impressive, mysterious, because of its market value.'
'The bogus religiosity ... is ultimately dependent upon their market value, has become the substitute for what paintings lost when the camera made them reproducible. Its function is nostalgic. ... It is the final, empty claim for the continuing values of an oligarchic, undemocratic culture. If the image is no longer unique and exclusive, the art object, the thing, must be made mysteriously so.'p23
'Reproduction [makes] it possible, even inevitable, than an image will be used for many different purposes'. Cropping out sections changes the narrative, and adding words and captions alters it as well. p27
'The meaning of an image is changed according to what one sees immediately beside it or what comes immediately after it. .... Art, with its unique undiminished authority, justifies most other forms of authority, that art makes inequality seem noble and hierarchies seem thrilling. For example, ... Cultural Heritage exploits the authority of art to glorify the present social system and its priorities' p29.
Chapter 3
'Men survey women before treating them. .... How a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated. .... That part of a woman's self which is the surveyor treats the part which is the surveyed so as to demonstrate to others how her whole self would like to be treated. ... This exemplary treatment of herself by herself constitutes her presence. [This] presence regulates what is and is not "permissible" within her presence. Every one of her actions - whatever its direct purpose or motivation - is also read as in indication of how she would like to be treated.' p46
'Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object ... an object of vision: a sight.' p47
In European oil painting, women are a recurring subject. Adam and Eve are the first naked subjects. 'Nakedness was created in the mind of the beholder. ... The woman is blamed and is punished by being made subservient to the man ... the man becomes the agent of God. The single moment depicted became the moment of shame ... their shame is not so much in relation to one another, as to the spectator. ... There remains the implication that the subject (a woman) is aware of being seen by a spectator. She is not naked as she is; She is naked as the spectator sees her.' p49
' The mirror was often used as a symbol of the vanity of woman. The moralising, however, was mostly hypocritical. You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure. The real function of the mirror ... was to make the woman connive in treating herself as, first and foremost, a sight.'
Venus and Cupid (Nell Gwynn naked, commissioned by Charles II) ... 'shows her passively looking at the spectator staring at her naked. ... The painting, when the King shows it to others, demonstrated this submission and his guests envied him'.
'The nude relates to lived sexuality. ... To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself. ... Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. ... In the average European oil painting of the nude, the principal protagonist is never painted. He is the spectator in front of the picture and he is presumed to be a man. p54
'Women are there to feed an appetite, not to have any of their own.' p55
'Women are depicted in a quite different way from men - not because the feminine is different from the masculine - but because the 'ideal' spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him'. p64
Chapter 5
'The art of any period tends to serve the ideological interests of the ruling class. ' p86
'The average work ... was a work produced more or less cynically: that is to say the values it was nominally expressing were less meaningful to the painter than the finishing of the commission or the selling of his product.'
'Oil painting ... defines the real as that which you can put your hands on. ... It can suggest objects possessing colour, texture, and temperature, filling a space ... filling the entire world.' The Ambassadors by Holbein ... it is ...the stuff, by which the men are surrounded and clothed which dominate the picture'.
'Oil painting celebrated a new kind of wealth ... had to be able to demonstrate the desirability of what money could buy. And the visual desirability of what can be bought lies in its tangibility, in how it will reward the touch, the hand of the owner.' p90
'Oil paintings were ... simple demonstrations of what gold or money could buy. Merchandise became the actual subject matter of works of art. (Dutch still life) Here the edible is made visible. ... It confirms the owner's wealth and habitual style of living. Paintings of animals ... livestock whose pedigree is emphasised as a proof of their value and whose pedigree emphasises the social status of their owners. Paintings of buildings ... as a feature of landed property.' p100
The highest category ... was the history or mythological picture ... yet their prestige and their emptiness were directly connected. ... A certain moral value was ascribed to the study of the classics. ... Classic texts... supplied the higher strata of the ruling class with a system of references for the forms of their own idealised behaviour. ... The heightened moments of life - to be found in heroic action, the dignified exercise of power, passion, courageous death, the noble pursuit of pleasure... should be seen to be lived. .... These pictures were to embellish such experience as they already possessed. ... The idealised appearances he found ... were a support, to his own view of himself ... the guise of his own ... nobility. p101
'The genre picture - the picture of low life - was thought of as the opposite of the mythological picture . It was vulgar instead of noble. [It showed] that virtue in this world was rewarded by social and financial success. The illusion of substantiality lent plausibility to a sentimental lie: ... that it was the honest and hard-working who prospered and that the good-for-nothings deservedly had nothing.' p103
'The painted poor smile as they offer what they have for sale. They smile at the better-off - to ingratiate themselves but also at the prospect of a sale or a job. Such pictures assert two things : that the poor are happy, and that the better-off are a source of hope for the world.' p104
[European oil painting is] accused of being obsessed by property. The truth is the other way round. It is the society and culture in question which is so obsessed. p109. ... The painting as a whole remains an advertisement for the sitter's good fortune, prestige and wealth.' p111
'The photographer's way of seeing is reflecting in his choice of subject. The painter's way of seeing is reconstituted by the marks he makes on the canvas or paper.' p10
'When an image is presented as a work of art, ... it is affected by .. assumptions about art ... : Beauty, truth, genius, civilisation, form, status, taste etc'.
'The past is not for living in; it is a well of conclusions from which we d raw in order to act.'
'The art of the past is being mystified because a privilege minority is striving to invent a history which can retrospectively justify the role of the ruling classes'. (What a stonking quote!!) p11
He is quite scathing about monetary values of artwork and the consequences of easy reproducibility. He talks about Leonardo's cartoon of The Virgin and Child with St Anne and John the Baptist, only known to scholars until an American wanted to buy it for £2.3m (prior to 1972!).
'Now it hangs in a room by itself ... behind bulletproof glass. ... It has become impressive, mysterious, because of its market value.'
'The bogus religiosity ... is ultimately dependent upon their market value, has become the substitute for what paintings lost when the camera made them reproducible. Its function is nostalgic. ... It is the final, empty claim for the continuing values of an oligarchic, undemocratic culture. If the image is no longer unique and exclusive, the art object, the thing, must be made mysteriously so.'p23
'Reproduction [makes] it possible, even inevitable, than an image will be used for many different purposes'. Cropping out sections changes the narrative, and adding words and captions alters it as well. p27
'The meaning of an image is changed according to what one sees immediately beside it or what comes immediately after it. .... Art, with its unique undiminished authority, justifies most other forms of authority, that art makes inequality seem noble and hierarchies seem thrilling. For example, ... Cultural Heritage exploits the authority of art to glorify the present social system and its priorities' p29.
Chapter 3
'Men survey women before treating them. .... How a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated. .... That part of a woman's self which is the surveyor treats the part which is the surveyed so as to demonstrate to others how her whole self would like to be treated. ... This exemplary treatment of herself by herself constitutes her presence. [This] presence regulates what is and is not "permissible" within her presence. Every one of her actions - whatever its direct purpose or motivation - is also read as in indication of how she would like to be treated.' p46
'Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object ... an object of vision: a sight.' p47
In European oil painting, women are a recurring subject. Adam and Eve are the first naked subjects. 'Nakedness was created in the mind of the beholder. ... The woman is blamed and is punished by being made subservient to the man ... the man becomes the agent of God. The single moment depicted became the moment of shame ... their shame is not so much in relation to one another, as to the spectator. ... There remains the implication that the subject (a woman) is aware of being seen by a spectator. She is not naked as she is; She is naked as the spectator sees her.' p49
' The mirror was often used as a symbol of the vanity of woman. The moralising, however, was mostly hypocritical. You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure. The real function of the mirror ... was to make the woman connive in treating herself as, first and foremost, a sight.'
Venus and Cupid (Nell Gwynn naked, commissioned by Charles II) ... 'shows her passively looking at the spectator staring at her naked. ... The painting, when the King shows it to others, demonstrated this submission and his guests envied him'.
'The nude relates to lived sexuality. ... To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself. ... Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. ... In the average European oil painting of the nude, the principal protagonist is never painted. He is the spectator in front of the picture and he is presumed to be a man. p54
'Women are there to feed an appetite, not to have any of their own.' p55
'Women are depicted in a quite different way from men - not because the feminine is different from the masculine - but because the 'ideal' spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him'. p64
Chapter 5
'The art of any period tends to serve the ideological interests of the ruling class. ' p86
'The average work ... was a work produced more or less cynically: that is to say the values it was nominally expressing were less meaningful to the painter than the finishing of the commission or the selling of his product.'
'Oil painting ... defines the real as that which you can put your hands on. ... It can suggest objects possessing colour, texture, and temperature, filling a space ... filling the entire world.' The Ambassadors by Holbein ... it is ...the stuff, by which the men are surrounded and clothed which dominate the picture'.
'Oil painting celebrated a new kind of wealth ... had to be able to demonstrate the desirability of what money could buy. And the visual desirability of what can be bought lies in its tangibility, in how it will reward the touch, the hand of the owner.' p90
'Oil paintings were ... simple demonstrations of what gold or money could buy. Merchandise became the actual subject matter of works of art. (Dutch still life) Here the edible is made visible. ... It confirms the owner's wealth and habitual style of living. Paintings of animals ... livestock whose pedigree is emphasised as a proof of their value and whose pedigree emphasises the social status of their owners. Paintings of buildings ... as a feature of landed property.' p100
The highest category ... was the history or mythological picture ... yet their prestige and their emptiness were directly connected. ... A certain moral value was ascribed to the study of the classics. ... Classic texts... supplied the higher strata of the ruling class with a system of references for the forms of their own idealised behaviour. ... The heightened moments of life - to be found in heroic action, the dignified exercise of power, passion, courageous death, the noble pursuit of pleasure... should be seen to be lived. .... These pictures were to embellish such experience as they already possessed. ... The idealised appearances he found ... were a support, to his own view of himself ... the guise of his own ... nobility. p101
'The genre picture - the picture of low life - was thought of as the opposite of the mythological picture . It was vulgar instead of noble. [It showed] that virtue in this world was rewarded by social and financial success. The illusion of substantiality lent plausibility to a sentimental lie: ... that it was the honest and hard-working who prospered and that the good-for-nothings deservedly had nothing.' p103
'The painted poor smile as they offer what they have for sale. They smile at the better-off - to ingratiate themselves but also at the prospect of a sale or a job. Such pictures assert two things : that the poor are happy, and that the better-off are a source of hope for the world.' p104
[European oil painting is] accused of being obsessed by property. The truth is the other way round. It is the society and culture in question which is so obsessed. p109. ... The painting as a whole remains an advertisement for the sitter's good fortune, prestige and wealth.' p111
Monday, 1 January 2018
Evolving my idea
More thoughts from today's bike ride - 25 miles on New Year's Day - a good start to the New Year.
I was thinking about whether Wightwick Manor would work with a student, to create an exhibition at their location - would they take a punt on working with a minimally experienced student? I'm not at all sure about this. But the more I think about it, the more I think this might be an idea with legs. And if Wightwick Manor did not want to run with it, maybe I could run it as an exhibition at Coventry University. In their publicity material, Coventry states it will use its contacts to assist with venues for exhibition of student work. I am assuming an exhibition of artists' work could be part of a submission for a Masters.
Vanda and I had a discussion about what one's practice is, a few months ago. Vanda had spent a lot of time thinking about her practice, and had concluded she did not want make work for sale (then it needs to be commercially viable, and usually uncontroversial), nor to exhibit her work in solo shows, or self-organised group shows. For her, a large part of the validation of her work, was for it to be exhibited in shows where work was selected by independent organisers. I agree with this. My work is an expression of my thought - which is positioned to how far I have thought, at the stage at which I make it. Then if it fits an exhibitor's agenda, all well and good. If it is good enough, it will be selected .... if it's not, it won't!
A call for entries for artwork about Valuing Women would draw in many different people's perspective on what individuals in British contemporary society think women should be valued for. So if such an exhibition could be organised, in a timely manner for the end of my Masters, it would create a body of work that might be worth analysis subsequent to the finishing of my current studies! It might provide a database of contemporary artists' interpretation of Values about women. And if the artists were from diverse backgrounds (ie age, orientation, ethnicity etc) it would address my concerns about my personal framing impacting significantly on the values that are identified.
I was thinking about whether Wightwick Manor would work with a student, to create an exhibition at their location - would they take a punt on working with a minimally experienced student? I'm not at all sure about this. But the more I think about it, the more I think this might be an idea with legs. And if Wightwick Manor did not want to run with it, maybe I could run it as an exhibition at Coventry University. In their publicity material, Coventry states it will use its contacts to assist with venues for exhibition of student work. I am assuming an exhibition of artists' work could be part of a submission for a Masters.
Vanda and I had a discussion about what one's practice is, a few months ago. Vanda had spent a lot of time thinking about her practice, and had concluded she did not want make work for sale (then it needs to be commercially viable, and usually uncontroversial), nor to exhibit her work in solo shows, or self-organised group shows. For her, a large part of the validation of her work, was for it to be exhibited in shows where work was selected by independent organisers. I agree with this. My work is an expression of my thought - which is positioned to how far I have thought, at the stage at which I make it. Then if it fits an exhibitor's agenda, all well and good. If it is good enough, it will be selected .... if it's not, it won't!
A call for entries for artwork about Valuing Women would draw in many different people's perspective on what individuals in British contemporary society think women should be valued for. So if such an exhibition could be organised, in a timely manner for the end of my Masters, it would create a body of work that might be worth analysis subsequent to the finishing of my current studies! It might provide a database of contemporary artists' interpretation of Values about women. And if the artists were from diverse backgrounds (ie age, orientation, ethnicity etc) it would address my concerns about my personal framing impacting significantly on the values that are identified.
Wightwick Manor - Idea for an Exhibition
My trip to Wightwick Manor has inspired an idea for an exhibition. They are soon to open an exhibition about Women and Female Suffrage. But what next?
What about an exhibition of work by and/or about women of the last 100 years who have contributed to their community in some way
- Little known or under-recognised
- Significant to the wider community or their immediate nearest and dearest
- Who have used their money, intellect, or time for the benefit of others
- Whose art media associated with women
I'd need to work this up a bit more, but I'm sure I could write a call for entries that would fit the National Trust policies, site and location. If it was promoted with local universities, places of worship and political organisations, I'm sure a huge diversity of artwork would be entered, celebrating their women!
What about an exhibition of work by and/or about women of the last 100 years who have contributed to their community in some way
- Little known or under-recognised
- Significant to the wider community or their immediate nearest and dearest
- Who have used their money, intellect, or time for the benefit of others
- Whose art media associated with women
I'd need to work this up a bit more, but I'm sure I could write a call for entries that would fit the National Trust policies, site and location. If it was promoted with local universities, places of worship and political organisations, I'm sure a huge diversity of artwork would be entered, celebrating their women!
Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton, National Trust.
This was the most interesting National Trust property that I have ever been to! It is an Arts & Crafts house, built by a Victorian paint manufacturer, and inherited by his son, Geoffrey Mander. (Interestingly Mander senior died at 47, from an abcess on his liver, that spread to his lung - which makes me wonder whether it was caused by the toxins in Victorian paint, that his liver was unable to deal with?).
Geoffrey Mander was a Liberal politician who was very forward thinking in his views. He was the first company boss to introduce the 40 hour week for his employees (50-60 was the norm), introduced annual leave, worked to achieve equal rights for workers (not sure how). He was a strong supporter of female suffrage and, according to Hansard - the record of speakers at the Houses of Parliament - spoke 80 times about female equality.
Mander and his wife donated the house and contents to the National Trust in 1937 - for the benefit of the public to see Arts & Crafts. The house is absolutely stuffed with Arts & Crafts objects and decoration. They had opened the house prior to this, while they still lived in it, for the public to see the truly astonishing interior. For the next 20 years they continued to collect Pre-Raphaelite Art - when it was out of vogue - so they acquired a considerable collection comparatively cheaply, including many of women. The female artists in the collection are:
Marie Spartalli-Stillman
Evelyn de Morgan (2nd wave Pre-Raphaelite, gay?)
May Morris (gay?)
Lizzie Siddle
Lucy Maddox Brown
Emma Sandys
Gertrudy Spencer Stanhope
Eleanor Brayholt.
Many of the people represented are of relatively unknown people -many women - who were socialists and who used their money for the benefit of others. Often supported war victims; children; the widowed.
Wightwick Manor has a major exhibition planned for 2018, about Women and Suffrage, using their own collection.
This is worth going back to take a second look.
Geoffrey Mander was a Liberal politician who was very forward thinking in his views. He was the first company boss to introduce the 40 hour week for his employees (50-60 was the norm), introduced annual leave, worked to achieve equal rights for workers (not sure how). He was a strong supporter of female suffrage and, according to Hansard - the record of speakers at the Houses of Parliament - spoke 80 times about female equality.
Mander and his wife donated the house and contents to the National Trust in 1937 - for the benefit of the public to see Arts & Crafts. The house is absolutely stuffed with Arts & Crafts objects and decoration. They had opened the house prior to this, while they still lived in it, for the public to see the truly astonishing interior. For the next 20 years they continued to collect Pre-Raphaelite Art - when it was out of vogue - so they acquired a considerable collection comparatively cheaply, including many of women. The female artists in the collection are:
 |
| Evelyn de Morgan, Persephone and Hesperus, 1881 Courtesy of Wightwick Manor |
Evelyn de Morgan (2nd wave Pre-Raphaelite, gay?)
May Morris (gay?)
Lizzie Siddle
Lucy Maddox Brown
Emma Sandys
Gertrudy Spencer Stanhope
Eleanor Brayholt.
Many of the people represented are of relatively unknown people -many women - who were socialists and who used their money for the benefit of others. Often supported war victims; children; the widowed.
Wightwick Manor has a major exhibition planned for 2018, about Women and Suffrage, using their own collection.
This is worth going back to take a second look.
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