Women take the spotlight in the newest art exhibit at Texas A&M.
“Women’s Work” is an interactive exhibit in the MSC’s Forsyth Galleries, featuring artwork from female artists including Mary Cassatt, Peggy Bacon, Grandma Moses and Texas-native Dorothy Hood. The exhibit aims to address women’s role as artists and as the subject in various pieces of artwork.
Pieces from both the Forsyth and Stark Galleries’ permanent collections are displayed, as well as those from the Runyon permanent collection. The items from the Forsyth Galleries are primarily from the late 19th and early 20th-century collection while the Stark Galleries’ pieces are contemporary and focused on Texas artists.
Jennifer Korolenko, curator of education and public programs for the Forsyth Galleries, said “Women’s Work” is the first show she has curated solely on her own.
Korolenko said she thought of this show as an opportunity to look at the University Art Galleries’ collections from a unique angle unlike anything she had done before, investigating gender roles and women rather than topics such as techniques and art movements.
“‘Women’s Work’ came out of a personal interest of mine in looking at the relationships that women have with and to the art world,” Korolenko said.
Korolenko said she wondered about the female artists within the university’s collections as well as women featured in the art itself.
“Being an artist myself, I was always bothered by the lack of female representation as artists in museums,” Korolenko said. “What was further compelling was that most subjects of art were women. The majority of paintings had women as subjects, but often we knew little to nothing about who these women were. The focus was always on the creator of the work, who is most likely a white man.”
Nuclear engineering senior Christian Brazell said he found the collections fascinating, especially when comparing them to other exhibits.
“Maybe it’s the pieces that they selected or it’s something different in the way that some of the different scenes were depicted but there’s something unique about it,” Brazell said.
Korolenko said she was happy with the outcome of the exhibit in regards to aesthetics and accessibility, such as the inclusion of scannable smartphone content and a typewriter that invites guests to type out their thoughts.
“The hope is to be a bit of an eye-opener, to spark curiosity on the subject and maybe to inspire 21st-century women and girls to connect with their histories,” Korolenko said.