Here comes the Battle of the Sexes. At least, that’s how the Delaware Art Museum is billing an exhibition that opens on Mar. 5. What makes it noteworthy here is that it’s another experimental attempt to get people to participate actively in the arts, as an experience, rather than passive viewing — about which I have mixed emotions.
Battle of the Sexes was organized by The Philadelphia Women’s Caucus for Art, a new group for me, but which (I learned via its website) was founded in 1972 in connection with the College Art Association. The Philadelphia chapter is the oldest of The Women’s Caucus for Art groups. Among its activities is organizing exhibitions.
This exhibition will present works by women artists, each of whom has chosen a male artist to exhibit a work alongside hers. Neither one of the pair will be attributed to an artist on the wall labels — so viewers will not know who made what. (Two are posted here.)
Then, the museum is asking visitors to mark, on ballots, who they think made what — female or male. A week before the exhibition closes, the museum will tally the “votes” and the results will be posted, along with the names and genders of the artists. For those who don’t expect to return, the results will also be posted on the Philadelphia-WCA blog and they will be emailed to voters who request the results.
What’s the point? The museum says the show aims to “have you looking, thinking, talking, voting, and coming back to see the mysteries revealed.”
But I probed further, “thinking” about what precisely? Was the exhibition intended to prove that we can tell what sex an artist is by the subject matter? Or to prove we can’t tell? Or to show that one is as good as the other?
None of those, exactly. Here is the museum’s answer:
The point of the exhibition is to see if people have preconceptions about the gender of artists based on the piece of art they see in front of them. Do floral paintings and pastels look feminine to people? And do rustic outdoor scenes or action images seem masculine? This exhibition is to let people find out if they have these preconceptions and to encourage people to think about how they form preconceptions.
I don’t know about this. In simpler times, people would guess that a woman painted Mary Cassatt’s paintings and that only a man could be as obsessed with sex as Picasso (do I have your attention now?).
But in these times, Sarah Lucas and Ghada Amer, among others, make sex a subject, and Charles LeDray sews tiny clothing items. Does it matter? Does the public think about such matters, or care?
Though I’m an advocate for equality of opportunity, I don’t. Nor do I necessarily want my visual art to be participatory. But let’s see what the the Delaware Art Museum finds out.
Photo Credits: Taxi, by N.P.D. (top) and Bluebird’s Journey by M.P. (bottom), courtesy of the Delaware Art Museum