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Issue Number 30
August 16, 2001

Never Done
A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston, 1870-1940
Museum of Fine Arts
Curated by Erica Hirshler
August 15 to December 2

From 1963-1966, Charles Giuliano labored in the basement of the Museum of Fine Arts restoring Ancient Egyptian artifacts.

If Boston, like any other major American cultural center, through its leading arts institutions, does not research, exhibit and publish the history of its artists, then, clearly nobody else will. It is mandatory that any city function as a primary resource for its own cultural achievements.

The operating concept here is that a rising tide raises all ships. That such efforts will directly benefit all of Boston’s artists and creators, past and present. It adds significant value both material and aesthetic. While Boston will forever live in the broad shadow of New York, these curatorial efforts will, perhaps, place Boston and its accomplishments on a par with second tier cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

During certain time frames, and in particular fields, Boston has been second to none. That is as true today as it has ever been. But in matters of culture, particularly the fine arts, Boston seems to chronically suffer from what Red Sox fans identify as, "The Curse of the Bambino." Perennial contenders, but never quite winners. Those Damn Yankees.

In chronicling the history of the visual arts in Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts has done a thorough and consistent job, but within a narrowly confined framework. More on that later. And the Institute of Contemporary Art, which could and should weigh in on this important agenda, has done, well, little or nothing. It sees itself as a major contemporary arts institution which just happens to be located in Boston. While it begs for attention and support it offers crumbs and table scraps to its community of starving artists.

The good news is that the current exhibition, A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston 1870-1940, adds a significant, scholarly chapter to the study of its artists. The 228 page catalogue that accompanies this exhibition, curated by Erica Hirshler, published by the MFA, $40, hardbound, will be a valued resource for students and scholars. This complements such prior exhibitions and catalogues as, Paul Revere’s Boston: 1735-1818, ( 1975), The Boston Tradition: American Paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, (1980), and The Bostonians: Painters of an Elegant Age, 1870-1930 (1986). The MFA has exhibited and published other related exhibitions including retrospectives of such major artists as John Singleton Copley, John Singer Sargent, Washington Allston, Martin Johnson Heade, and F. Holland Day. There have also been major shows for the contemporary Bostonians Michael Mazur and Abelardo Morrell. Through the annual Maud Morgan Award, for the past few years, the MFA acquires one work by a mid career female artist.

The bad news is that in contrast to the enormous effort in this exhibition, as was also true in its predecessor, Painters of an Elegant Age, the work itself is dominantly, trite, derivative, provincial, sentimental, maudlin and academic. Yawn.

Several of the women in the current exhibition were also included in Painters of an Elegant Age so in some ways this is a sequel to that show. It matters not, however, if the hand at the end of the brush in this Elegant Age is black, white, Native American, gay-straight, male-female, the work just isn’t very compelling. And that wasn’t just a Boston problem. It was an American problem.

With the notable exception of a handful of artists, craftsmen and designers the American Fine Arts in the Gilded Age, The American Renaissance, or what Lewis Mumford dubbed, The Brown Decades, following the Civil War through, take your pick , the 1920s-1940s, were boring at best. American architecture, decorative, and industrials arts were, to be sure, first rate. But, in the fine arts we needed to be profoundly shaken up.

That happened in 1913 with the Armory Show, and when Americans, most importantly lesbians and gays, returned to America, especially Provincetown and Greenwich Village during World War One. Or fled to Europe as the Lost Generation between the wars. And later emigrated to America during World War Two.

To be fair, Hirshler is organizing an exhibition that focuses on this modernist tradition, The Provincetown White Line Prints, a technique invented by B.J.O. Nordfeldt. This movement, during the era of World War One, included, among others, such interesting and progressive women as Ethel Mars, Maude Squires, Blanche Lazzell and Agnes Weinrich. The MFA is also mounting a retrospective of work by Lazzell. The market for her work has soared in the past decade. We eagerly anticipate these exhibitions.

After 1930, the arts in Boston, particularly because of its Jewish immigrants, and to a lesser extent its Italian, Irish and Lebanese (Kahlil Gibran) got more complex, and from the viewpoint of the MFA, messy. Its scholarly surveys always stop short of including its Jewish immigrant artists, The Boston Expressionists, Hyman Bloom, Jack Levine, Karl Zerbe, David Aronson and their progeny. This chapter has been told by the DeCordova Museum, in a rather flawed effort, and curiously, by the ICA under its now deceased director, Stephen Prokopoff.

While this latest MFA show acknowledges women does so on its own turf and terms. That leaves six plus decades, or three generations of artists, disenfranchised. When is the MFA going to tell Our Story. Cosa Nostra. When will we be celebrated for our lifelong commitments and contributions.

Perhaps I stand alone. Old crank always blowing the same tune. After a while you just tune out the screed. During the press tour, for example, my peers seemed to be lapping it up. They seemed taken in by all the drooling sentiment. Mesmerized by the occasional exquisite vase, or superb stained glass window, impressive figure in bronze, plaster heads of and by an African American, well executed figure painting or portrait.

They trotted back to the office to crank out splashy features urging Bostonians to share in this fabulous celebration. The camera crews flocked in to shoot bites for the evening news. File under mass culture.

What is lost in all this euphoria is the entire epic battle of modernism which fought the good fight against the academy and liberated artists from the strangle hold of these sentimental traditions. Does it really matter that the pigeon spattered, life size, bronze sculpture in a park of a general on a horse was created by a woman? It is still a general on a horse. Big deal. Unless, of course, it was created by Augustus Saint Gaudens, or Daniel Chester French. During the Gilded Age, all others, regardless of race or sex, need not apply.

Then and now there are artists and creators who struggle against the academy. Theirs is the plaintive voice. But so richly deserving to be heard. They are the unwashed, unbowed and uninvited. But after the ball, as they flee back to their life of drudgery and neglect, they are the ones who drop the glass slipper. Let us hope that when the MFA and ICA get prodded into adding an updated chapter to a noble history they do not attend the ball in disguise.

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