It is difficult not to view the new exhibit Colorado Women to Watch as the sort of art offering that had its day — and is now on its way out.
Separating artists by gender? In 2023? That is certainly not on trend, especially within the culture of museums and educational institutions where the current thinking is that gender is impossible to sort into neat, binary categories the way this group exhibition does.
This is a top-notch offering and features some of the region’s most talented artists. Like everything at , it is well-produced, cohesive and unpretentious. Itap colorful, kid-friendly and full of rich ideas.
Still, Colorado Women to Watch feels like an old-school “she” of a show in an emerging “they” world.
Certainly, this segregation is well-intended. The five artists in the lineup are all from Colorado, and each was nominated by local curator Nora Burnett Abrams to take part in the triennial “Women to Watch” exhibition series that is produced by the Washington, D.C.-based National Museum of Women in the Arts.
That museum, which has been around since 1987, has played an important role in raising awareness about the inequities that have long plagued female artists. It has also put its money where its sentiments are, assembling and exhibiting its own wide-ranging art collection. Its work was, and remains, crucial.
Women have made progress in the arts in recent decades, but no one thinks the playing field is level. Across the creative industries — in filmmaking, literature, classical music, design and more — audits show that men still make more money and have more opportunities than women. The collections of major art museums can easily favor male artists over female artists by a ratio of 3 to 1, or more.
There is a problem here, and it needs to be solved — actively and relentlessly. Museums, galleries, collectors and critics should all feel the pressure and, generally speaking, they do.
But coming up with a method to fix things is not so easy, and efforts like the Women to Watch exhibitions — once the standard strategy for spotlighting the issue and upping the public presence of female artists — have become problematic.
That is because this gender binary-minded way of framing art-making has been usurped but the very real fact that progressive thinkers have no desire, and a dwindling willingness, to let any institution force a single delineation of male and female on living, breathing artists. You can audit the past in this way, maybe, but the present would prefer you had a more open mind.
Also in that present-aware camp: entities like music’s Grammy awards and film’s Independent Spirit Awards, which have moved towed gender-neutral performance categories; retail outlets that welcome all customers to buy their unisex clothing; and everyone who adds their preferred pronouns to the signatures of their emails or supports gender-neutral restrooms.
And, of course, the scores of artists themselves, who simply refuse to let others “he” or “she” them. Where do those human beings fit into a show of “women” artists? How do you address their exclusion? You want to force those artists to identify one way or the other so they have a comfortable place in the lineup. Thatap not going to happen. Itap time for a new strategy.
Of course, no one is being actively exclusionary. Colorado Women to Watch goes to great lengths to be inclusive. The artists are from different generations, geographies, personal backgrounds. For the record, they are Kim Dickey, Ana María Hernando, Maia Ruth Lee, Suchitra Mattai and Senga Nengudi.
Each has an esteemed career that extends beyond Colorado. Nengudi, in particular, is in the upper echelon of contemporary American artists and has been for decades. Hernando, who was actually the one chosen to participate in the national show in D.C., is a 2023 Joan Mitchell Foundation fellow. These artists have works in important collections, they get museum shows, and each is, to some degree, a commercial success.
And though they were not chosen initially to be exhibited together, CVA curator Cecily Cullen was wise to see a connection among their efforts.
Each of the artists uses materials in a way that can “reshape our perception of power,” Cullens writes in the show’s introduction.
One way they do this is by taking common items we traditionally associate as “female” and turning them into objects that can’t be easily dismissed: Nengudi is famous for using women’s stockings as one of her raw materials; Mattai integrates saris — women’s garments connected to the Indian subcontinent — into her wall sculptures; Hernando makes bold statements using fluffy, tule fabrics one might otherwise find on a wedding gown or a quinceañera dress.
As individuals, their art has more (and many) things to say, and this exhibition, which has a section grouping each of their works along with informative wall text, provides the real estate to appreciate them better.
But the context in which they are presented — as Women to Watch — invites us to consider them primarily as female artists and to filter their work in that way. It is a recognition and a celebration of the work that female artists do and it fits into the long line of provocative and landmark exhibitions that have, over time, remade the way we think about women artists and their place in the creative universe.
Those shows had their day, and maybe they have a future. But in the so-fast moving present, they can feel unaware, and inadequately framed. There is an important point to be made here. But how to make it, in 2023, so it resonates with those powerful moments in the past, without seeming obsolete? Thatap a challenge for our age — and one that will be up to new curators to solve.
IF YOU GO
Colorado Women to Watch continues through Oct. 21 at the Center for Visual Art, 965 Santa Fe Drive. Info: 303-615-0282 or msudenver.edu/cva.
