#5WomenArtists 2020

Can you name five women artists?

Since 2016, the National Museum of Women in the Arts has been asking this question on social media each March during Women's History Month using the hashtag #5WomenArtists. The campaign calls attention to the fact that women have historically not been treated equally in the art world, and remain dramatically underrepresented and undervalued in today's museums, galleries, and auction houses. Some numbers:

• Nearly half (45.8%) of visual artists in the United States are women; on average, they earn 74¢ for every dollar made by male artists. (National Endowment for the Arts)
• A data survey of the permanent collections of 18 prominent art museums in the U.S. found that out of over 10,000 artists, 87% are male, and 85% are white. (Public Library of Science)
• Women make up a majority of professional art museum staff but, despite recent gains, they remain underrepresented in leadership positions. (Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey 2018)
• Women earn 70% of Bachelors of Fine Arts and 65–75% of Masters of Fine Arts in the U.S., though only 46% of working artists (across all arts disciplines) are women.
• There are no women in the top 0.03% of the auction market, where 41% of the profit is concentrated. Overall, 96.1% of artworks sold at auction are by male artists. (Bocart et al., Glass Ceilings in the Art Market)

Black women are doubly underrepresented in this context, often absent from America's museums and erased from the art world's memory. To address these disparities, CAAM will be sharing biographies of five women artists have shown in the museum:

• Sula Bermúdez-Silverman
• Adia Millett
• Betye Saar
• Carla Jay Harris
• Janna Ireland

Also, check CAAM's 2019 #5WomenArtists lineup, which focused on the works of women artists in CAAM's permanent collection:

• Sadie Barnette
• (link https://caamuseum.org/learn/600state/meet-the-artist/5womenartists-lisa-diane-wedgeworth text: Lisa Diane Wedgeworth popup: no)
• Ronda Brown
• April Bey
• Dominique Moody