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The following is a response to Maura Reilly’s article “Taking the Measure of Sexism: Facts, Figures, and Fixes” about the current statistics of Women in the Art World. Our coverage begins with our Editor’s Letter.
When we started in 1985, dealers, curators, and critics refused to admit there was a problem. Some actually said that women and artists of color didn’t make art that was “good enough.” Now the bias is more coded. Tokenism, showing the same few women or artists of color over and over, is a huge distraction. The glass ceiling is so crushing you bang your head against it every day! And let’s not get started on the subject of economic inequity. White male artists earn four to nine times more than everyone else. If you follow the money to the 1 percent of the 1 percent who buy art and run museum boards, it all starts to add up. Artists are great, but the art world sucks. The good news is that lots of artists are rejecting this corrupt system. Like us, they’re working to create an art world they want to live in.
A version of this story originally appeared in the June 2015 issue of ARTnews on page 64.