CODART, Dutch and Flemish art in museums worldwide

Request for Information on Women Artists in European Collections

The Advancing Women Artists Foundation (AWA) based in Florence and the Eskenazi Museum of Art of Indiana University in Bloomington (Indiana) are setting up an internet database devoted to works by women artists active in the United States and Europe prior to 1800. The organizers are asking all European CODART members for their help in gathering information on works of art by women artists in your museums, especially those artworks in your storages. Please see their call for information below.

A Space of Their Own

Called A Space of their Own, our assembly which amounts to a “virtual museum”, is destined to become the most comprehensive source of information about artworks by historic female painters, pastellists, printmakers, and sculptors active from the 15th to the 19th centuries.

We are reaching out to our museum colleagues to gather information about their holdings, as we hope to feature each museum and their art by women as part of A Space of their Own. Our estimated launch date: Spring, 2019. Part of our program is a hoped for space where scholars can publish new research on women artists and be given credit for it. We have contacted and are receiving responses from all major museums in North America and now we are turning to our friends Europe.

To this end, we would be grateful if you could help us with the following questions:

  • Do you have works by women artists active before the 19th century in your collection? We are particularly interested in works by women that are in your storages/deposits that cannot be seen. These represent invisible pieces we want to have better known and our virtual museum will provide a permanent “wall” for them to be viewed.
  • If yes, do you have information about them and digital images which you could share with us?

This pilot project has been made possible by the generous support of Dr. Jane Fortune, National Advisory Board member of the Eskenazi Museum of Art and founder and chairman of the AWA, a foundation dedicated to research, restoration and exhibition of art by women in Tuscany and the world (www.advancingwomenartists.org).

We hope you find this project exciting and will join us! Thank you so much for your help! Feel free to respond to us by email.  My email is gealta@indiana.edu; my assistant is Jonathan Salvati jsalvati@iu.edu. We really look forward to hearing from you!