Study aims to uncover ‘hidden’ art of feminists

UNTOLD STORIES OF THE PAST 50 YEARS WILL BE COLLECTED

UNTOLD stories of feminist art in the UK and Ireland are being collected by researchers.

Loughborough University and the Institute of Art, Design and Technology, in Dún Laoghaire, Ireland, are working together to record, curate, and archive 50 years’ worth of oral histories and digitised records of feminist artists.

Feminist Art Making Histories aims to unearth “hidden and untold” stories of feminist art across both islands from the 1970s to the present day.

The three-year-long project will be led by Professor Hilary Robinson, of Loughborough’s School of Social Sciences and Humanities, and Dr Tina Kinsella, in Dun Laoghaire.

The stories and accompanying memorabilia – such as leaflets, tickets, and other written items – they gather will be captured digitally and then uploaded to the Digital Repository of Ireland.

Prof Robinson and Dr Kinsella said: “The heritage and care for art by women is marginalised within museology, art history and arts pedagogies.

“It is not valued by the art market, with from none to five works by women in lists of the 100 most expensive per year in recent sales by living artists.

“Contemporary art textbooks mention few British/ Irish feminist artists and have few British/Irish feminist authors.

“Over 50 years history of feminist art in UK/Ireland thus is hidden through bias or ignorance.

“The collection and preservation of this archive is urgent for the purposes of current and future knowledge, but it is also time-critical insofar as a distressing number of feminist artists, art writers, teachers, and curators active in the 1960s-70s have already died.

“Our aim is to discover and preserve what histories we can from those still able to tell them.”