Women Looking for Women: A Precarious Journey

In 1994, Marijke Seresia founded in Antwerp the non-profit organization Gynaika to address discrimination against women in the art world. Through exhibitions and monographs on both contemporary and historical women artists, she challenged the structural gender bias embedded in the field. At the time, however, such an approach attracted little attention, and the rediscovery of overlooked women artists remained a marginal pursuit within art history and cultural studies, exclusively carried out by women researchers. Since 2000, interest in Flemish and Dutch women artists has gained momentum as part of a broader, global movement of reassessment and recovery. At the same time, the notion of the ‘woman artist’ was reconfigured to allow for new perspectives. Gradually, it became clear that the very notion of artistic practice itself needed to be reconsidered.

Katlijne Van der Stighelen

University of Leuven

Katlijne Van der Stighelen was Full Professor at KU Leuven until 2024. Her first book (1987) focused on the polyglot scholar and artist Anna Maria van Schurman. In 1999, together with Mirjam Westen (Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem), she curated the first exhibition on women artists in Belgium and the Netherlands (1500–1950), Elck zijn waerom / À chacun sa grâce. She curated an exhibition on Michaelina Wautier at the MAS Museum in Antwerp in 2018 and is co-author and co-editor of the catalogue accompanying the Michaelina Wautier exhibition currently on view at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and, from March 2026, at the Royal Academy in London. With Anna Orlando, she is preparing Van Dyck l’Europeo. The Journey of a Genius from Antwerp to Genoa to London, opening in spring 2026 at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa.