A Place in the Sun

28. August 2009 - 10. January 2010

120 years ago women were given access to education in pictorial arts on equal terms with men. Men’s educational head start still influences how many works by female artists are accessible to the public today in our museums and in other collections. This exhibition gives the visitors access to art by women who were the first professional artists. Here you can see works by both known and unknown artists.

 Museums all over Denmark as well as private collectors have generously lent us works for the exhibition. This has enabled us to assemble a collective exhibition with female Danish artists and sculptors from the pioneer days.   With this chosen period we focus on a time when female artists asserted themselves in Denmark for real. The idea of ’the intimate’ is the focal point for the choice of works that taken together brings to our attention the female artists' choices of motives, their artistic expression and the depiction of a female world of experience, including the role of artist, the existential conditions and emotional values. Among other things it is possible to see in the portraits how female artists depicted women as they saw them rather than as men saw them. 

The exhibition points out quality and strength in the works of female artists. The idea is to strengthen the understanding of female artists’ contribution and to focus on their conditions and expressions. Many of the works in the exhibition have been neglected. When the works of female artists are placed next to each other it gives rise to a qualified debate of the question as to whether a particular female aesthetic exists or whether it is only a historically based difference in the artistic existence – personally, financially and with regard to their representation in the collections. 

 At the Women’s Museum the visitors will have a chance to acquaint themselves with the female pioneers of art in parallel with another exhibition at the museum, dealing with female pioneers in local politics on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote and to stand in local elections.  

 Eva Pohl, art historian and writer, was the instigator for this exhibition, which carries the same title as her book on the subject, published in 2008.  The exhibition sheds light on female artists in Denmark. In Paris for the rest of this year you can see a grand exhibition with women’s art in the exhibition elles@centrepompidou.