Women art historians have often remained unseen among the numerous layers of intellectual contributions constructing the field of art history.
The image of the matryoshka conjures up the unwrapping of layers, uncovering what is underneath, what is inside.
Peeling away the layers in the attempt of revealing the role of women in art history is the aim of this data-driven project.
At the beginning, every matryoshka doll looks similar to the other.
A solid and unique piece of wood, softly shaped and a little bit shiny.
If you have ever played with one of these dolls, you know that things are not as they may appear from afar.
If you look closer, you can see that what once appeared to be one now breaks into two perfectly joint halves.
Let’s take a moment to observe things from an external perspective.
And take a look at this superficial division.
What can we see?
Let's start with some numbers.
The total number of known art historians in the world is .
of them are men.
of them are women.
This means that only of art historians are women.
We observed the doll and noticed how different parts make up the complete external decoration and in what percentage.
Are we sure we are not missing smaller details?
We looked for people whose gender is described as male or female.
What about art historians who do not feel represented by
gender binarism?
Let's take a look at our numbers again.
The total number of known art historians in the world is .
of them are men.
of them are women.
of them are non-binary.
This means that non-binary people represent only the 0.01% of the total number of known art historians in the world.
It is now time to narrow and, at the same time, go deeper inside our search.
Matryoshka is known to be a symbol of Russian culture.
Many do not know that nesting dolls have been used as symbols for hundreds of years in many different countries. From China to Japan, they finally spread throughout eastern Europe.
Wanting to go a little more into detail, we decided to focus our study on the European status of gender distribution among art historians, analyzing it from a geographical perspective.
As expected, most of the countries report a majority of male art historians.
But there are also a few exceptions!
Estonia scores 51.4% of female art historians.
Slovenia scores a surprising 57.7% against the general trend.
If we exclude the outliers, we may say that the observed scenario was pretty predictable.
However, data collected about European distribution can be very useful, following our research principle which goes from the most general to the more specific.
Let’s see more in detail how we can use them by looking at one of the most important issues of gender inequality: occupation.
Art history is one of the most interdisciplinary fields in the humanities and it is related to several other sectors. Accordingly, art historians are multifaceted figures, usually having more than one job.
For this reason, we looked for the most common occupations among art historians for each gender.
The results are pretty clear.
Most art historians, both women and men, occupy positions that are mostly related to cultural institutions.
Being recognized as a member of one of these institutions can therefore be considered as a sign of academic recognition and public prestige.
Let’s see what are the rates for male and female art historians inside european academies and organizations.
In this case, we will merge
data obtained from the geographical analysis
with data demonstrating visibility of women inside academic institutions.
What do you expect from this comparison?
Do you think that the proportions will remain the same?
Select a country and see!
As you can see, proportions are not respected at all.
More precisely, women's visibility inside academic institutions doesn't generally reach half of their visibility for each country.
Let's go deeper!
Taking these results into consideration, let’s see if a different result can be observed by analyzing visibility from a different perspective.
It's time to turn the tables!
Let’s substitute the geographical coordinates with temporal limits
and translate the academic visibility into authorial recognition.
Let’s start by looking at the timeline.
We will see how many art historians are going through the most productive period of their career along intervals of twenty years.
As time goes by, the percentage of females grows almost linearly.
Proportionally, the gender gap is gradually shrinking.
Let’s now add the actual number of scholarly publications produced during those years to the equation.
Despite the aforementioned evolution in female activity, the production of scholarly works and therefore their visibility remains almost unchanged.
Data show that the gender inequality gap in the art history field is real.
Starting from this general trend, let’s consider a more specific example from the real world in which the results so far observed can be tested and questioned.
Let’s look at ARTchives!
ARTchives is a platform aiming to collect information related to art historians' personal archives.
The objective of the project is therefore to populate a queryable knowledge graph of art historians’ archival fonds for research purposes.
At the moment, ARTchives contains data about:
collections.
art historians.
keeping institutions.
ARTchives contains no data about gender.
For our research purposes, we integrated information about gender from Wikidata and came out with the following result:
Only one out of the 26 art historians is actually a woman.
Is it really possible?
What happens if we take a deeper look at what's inside ARTchives?
Some things may look familiar to us but sometimes we are missing their hidden meaning.
Do you know what the origin of the word matryoshka is?
n.
A nesting doll that is part of a set and is decorated with the features of a woman in traditional Russian dress.
[Russian matrëška, from Matrëna,
feminine personal name (associated in popular tradition with the mothers of large peasant families), from earlier Matrona, ultimately from Latin mātrōna, matron; see matron.]
Matryoshkas are not only symbols of femininity, as we all know.
Matryoshkas are also the embodiment of a name.
The name of a woman.
Peeling away the layers in the attempt of revealing the
names of women inside ARTchives is indeed the aim of our final research.
We traced back to hidden names of women connected to the collections inside ARTchives in order to raise their visibility.
These are their portraits.
Gender: female.
Country: Italy.
Occupation: Art historian, Auctioneer, Editor.
Member of: Cini Foundation.
Published: Cupid and Psyche in Renaissance Painting before Raphael.
1
Gender: female.
Country: United States of America.
Occupation: Art historian, University teacher, Journalist, Art critic, Film critic, Translator, Writer.
Member of: New York University,Getty Center, Anthology Film Archives.
Published:On the Eve of the Future: The Reasonable Facsimile and the Philosophical Toy.
2
Gender: female.
Country: United Kingdom.
Occupation: Art historian, Biografer, Historian, Writer.
Member of: British Red Cross.
3
Gender: female.
Country: United States of America.
Occupation: Essayist, Journalist, Novelist, Screenwriter, Writer.
Member of: American Academy of Arts and Letters.
4
Gender: female.
Country: German Empire.
Occupation: Art Collector, Patron of the arts.
Member of: Bibliotheca Hertziana - Max Planck Institute of Art History.
5
Gender: female.
Country: United Kingdom.
Occupation: Art Historian
Member of: Cini Foundation.
Published:
- A Chapter in Fourteenth Century Iconography: Verona
- The Reconstruction of a Polyptych by Michele Giambono.
6
Gender: female.
Country: United States of America.
Occupation: Art historian, University teacher.
Member of: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study, National Endowment for the Humanities.
Published:
- Interpretation without Representation, or, the Viewing of Las Meninas,
- Describe or Narrate? A Problem in Realistic Representation.
7
Gender: female.
Country: Germany.
Occupation: Art historian, University teacher.
Member of: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
8
Gender: female.
Country: United Kingdom.
Occupation: Art historian, Curator.
Member of: British Academy, Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts, Warburg Institute.
Published:
- Rubens: Subjects from History.
- The Slave in European Art: from Renaissance Trophy to Abolitionist Emblem.
9
Gender: female.
Country: Italy.
Occupation: Art historian, University teacher, Organizational Founder, Writer.
Member of: Fondazione Federico Zeri, Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti.
Published:
-Louis Gauffier and the question of J.- L.
-David's Vue présumée du Jardin du Luxembourg.
- On the Theme of Landscape - II: Elsheimer and Galileo.
10
We have come to the end of our journey.
Gender inequality is still real and finding ways for filling this gap is now more important than ever.
For this reason, we decided to share and make available all the data used in this project.
Additionally, we decided to create a small knowledge graph that could enrich Linked Open datasets and other interesting projects such as ARTchives with the significant profiles of women found hidden inside it.
