Julian Sanchez responds to two New York Magazine items I mentioned below, heaping praise on Saltz's piece and ample scorn on the gender rundown addendum published by the magazine. On this, I should note that "art world institutions" is my phrasing, a broad umbrella to relate institutions as diverse as Matthew Marks Gallery and the Frick Collection. That drives at the problem, Sanchez argues: There's no basis for comparison.
In fact I think the Frick serves as a foil to the other listings—an historical baseline. If gender symmetry isn't entirely to be expected among artworks representing the 20th century at MoMA, it's certainly not for centuries prior; a 99/1 breakdown between men and women is about what you'd expect at the Frick. (If anything, the Frick Collection is too small to serve as a truly meaningful base, but no matter. Any collection of Old Master paintings will break down the same way because the Old Masters were all, of course, men.) Compare that ratio, then, with the ratio of institutions that all operate in a postfeminist age—and by that I mean institutions that persist or came into existence after three waves of feminist thought and activism. What you find is not what you (not what I) would expect. Or, rather, not what we should accept: That art by men is always considered more commercially palatable and historically significant than art by women according to a range of institutions whose activity, taken in totem, represents a complete cross section of the contemporary art world. And to be perfectly sanguine about it, it's not as if these agents each act in a bubble. Matthew Marks co-directs the Armory Show, which, in a pinch, could stand in for Art Basel Miami Beach.
Sanchez writes, "It might at least be moderately telling to compare six similar art festivals or six otherwise similar galleries." Two listings offer exactly that in and of themselves: Art Basel Miami Beach is a trade show featuring artworks by hundreds of international galleries, and the Venice Biennale comprises artists selected by nations from six continents. For both, roughly one quarter of participating artists are women.
Another set of statistics might come closer to satisfying Sanchez's standards for rigor: Brainstormers compiled in 2006 gender breakdowns for 200 select Chelsea galleries. (The group does not provide a methodology—this work is more activism than social science. From a casual glance, it's apparent to me that all the selected dealers work in the primary market and represent artists.) The results: map one and map two. Readers will know that I'm usually thrilled to see so much burnt orange splattered on a page—but in this presentation, the orange alert signals an overabundance of testosterone.
This graph could easily have been formatted to depict not just ratios but numbers to address Sanchez's sensible point that at "smaller and (almost by definition) more idiosyncratic galleries . . . the numbers are apt to be highly sensitive to a swing of a few works or artists." And we'd really be getting somewhere if the graph could plot sales by gender throughout Chelsea, but these data aren't available. Nevertheless—and acknowledging that New York Magazine failed to make the case for context—it's crucial to consider the activity of dealers alongside the activity of curators because the one informs the other. (As Jeffry Cudlin ably noted last month, in contradistinction to Blake Gopnik's oddball assertion that museums drive the market.
So do we march through the borough with quotas and clipboards? No, that isn't the solution: Artworks are not fungible, and any single gallery choosing the ten best available artists for its stable may select ten men. But given that, in 2007, MFA enrollment (a reasonable indicator for young artists) breaks down even-Steven between men and women, we should not suspect all the galleries to go for the guys. They do, though, by a non-negligible margin. I strongly suspect (and anecdota suggest) that the reasons are principally social—owing to the same myriad problems women face entering and succeeding in every other sector of the workforce.
Saltz writes, acutely, "[I]t has become bitterly clear that MoMA's stubborn unwillingness to integrate more women into these galleries is not only a failure of the imagination and a moral emergency; it amounts to apartheid." If a failure to integrate MoMA amounts to apartheid, the lack of integration in Chelsea is Jim Crow.
UPDATE: On the other hand, Martin Bromirski has a suggestion for New York Mag: Data collector, collect thyself.
Posted by Kriston at November 21, 2007 2:22 PM
