The seeds of this campaign were planted in 2016....

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The Royal Academy put on an exhibition: Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse. You would have thought the RA would have found a good few paintings of gardens by women but in fact there was just one! There was also just one painting by a person of colour. 

From that time we started to look into the facts around public art galleries. Who runs them, who funds them, who sits on their boards, what strategies and policies do they have for their collections?  We asked Freedom of Information questions about their artworks and who created them, we looked at their special exhibitions, their acquisitions and bequests.  

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We didn't like what we found
 

We found that the Department of Digital Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) directly funds The National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, The Wallace Collection and all the Tate galleries, while other art galleries are funded indirectly via the Arts council.  We found that while DCMS requires galleries to work towards diversity in staff and audiences, there is no such requirement for their collections. We also found that board members of our national gallery don't reply to members of the public on this subject, and that DCMS are unable or unwilling to provide any explanation as to why their diversity policies exclude curation, or any documentation as to how that decision was made. See our 'Interesting facts' below for more on the things we discovered.

On visiting galleries, we found that the walls are festooned with paintings of women with no or few clothes on, watched or surrounded by fully clothed men. We found that a painting of three naked women being judged as to how beautiful they were by clothed men was considered an appropriate image to be hung in a place that children regularly visit. We found that the National Gallery has no less than five versions of this story, two by the same artist.  

You may have noticed yourself, when you go into one of our public galleries, that nearly all the paintings are by white men. Or you may be so used to that being the case that you have never really been conscious of it, never questioned it. 

But you should notice, whether you are male or female, black or white, young or old, because it is important, and here's why. 

Only exhibiting art by white men…

1. Deprives women, people of colour and all other underrepresented groups  of the joyfully affirming experience of seeing themselves and their lives reflected in art.

2. Distorts the self-image of women and people of colour because of how they are depicted

3. Normalises sexual exploitation and violence against women because the art includes images of these crimes with neither commentary nor censure.

4. Discriminates against other artists.  

5. Works against diversity of audiences by failing to provide art that speaks to everyone. 

6. Communicates to potential new generations of women artists and artists of colour that they are unlikely to succeed or be of interest.

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