Do Women Have To Be Naked To Get Into SLAM?

In 1989 an art collective known as the Guerrilla Girls put up ads on buses calling attention to a survey that found that at the NY Metropolitan Museum less than five percent of the artists in the modern galleries were women. Meanwhile eighty-five percent of the nudes in those galleries were female. They presumably limited themselves to the modern galleries as representation would be even poorer in classical art.

Since sexy data is kind of my thing, I decided to apply this test to my local museum, the St. Louis Art Museum, or SLAM. I went to the museum with a little notebook to take some tallies. Turns out that this is tricky to do. Modern art at SLAM isn't all neatly tucked into one section, it's kind of scattered throughout the museum and even some outside of it. In the end I had to throw away most of the data I collected on site and go through the website instead. These were the results when limited to "Modern and Contemporary Art" and "On view only" --items in storage don't count.

Going through the nudes, 68% of the pieces were of women, 20% were of men and 12% of the pieces had depictions of men and women. The mixed pieces didn't necessarily mean balanced though, pieces like The Fire show far more nude women than men.

As to artists, 94.5% were men and only 6.5% were women. So technically SLAM has more representation than the Met. did, but it's 2022, so that's not exactly impressive.

But wait, there's a twist. There actually more than two genders. While there I was able to see a temporary exhibit by local photographer Jess T. Dugan, a non-binary individual who goes by they/them. If we factor in all the pieces from Dugan's exhibition then the ratios go to 85.6% men, 5.9% women and 8.5% non-binary. Does this mean that women are more likely to go on display if they declare themselves nonbinary? Well, not really. This was kind of a fluke and by the time this article comes out Dugan's exhibition will be over.

No works of art depicting nude non-binary individuals were noted in my survey.

There's one other collection that was tucked away to the side, unmarked on the museum map: the young artists exhibition. This featured works by 17 local high school students, 15 of which were female. Now, a lesser writer might conclude with the sentiment that THE FUTURE IS FEMALE. However, that's not my take away. These teens are unlikely to grow up and make a living as professional artists. Yet, this little exhibition shows that women have plenty of potential to be great artists. So... where are the women artists?

Linda Nochlin wrote an important essay in 1971 entitled "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" She explains:

...the answer to why there have been no great women artists lies not in the nature of individual genius or the lack of it, but in the nature of given social institutions and what they forbid or encourage in various classes or groups of individuals.

Women have traditionally simply been excluded from art schools. If a woman wanted to write poetry or a novel on her own she could, but visual art is more demanding. You need access to supplies, training and, well, nude models.

In the 21st century, women are of course allowed in art schools. However, they may still find their energies diverted by the demands of house and family, still disproportionately picked up by women. I don't have answers.

And look, I'm critiquing SLAM here, but it's a giant free museum; I don't really have any grounds to complain. They can show what they want. Just, maybe try to get some better ratios at least in the contemporary art section.

Not that anyone cares, but my favorite work by a woman at SLAM is a plaque by Jenny Holzer, which feels full of millennial angst but she's actually a boomer. It reads:

SOME DAYS YOU WAKE AND IMMEDIATELY START TO WORRY. NOTHING IN PARTICULAR IS WRONG, IT'S JUST THE SUSPICION THAT FORCES ARE ALIGNING QUIETLY AND THERE WILL BE TROUBLE.

My favorite work by a man is a painting so epic, Led Zeppelin should've done a song about it, Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion by John Martin.