Usually when I write a post like yesterday’s, about the RAW program at the Norton Museum of Art, some reader, or more than one, writes that women artists should stand on their own merit, and that the system isn’t biased against them. I think history proves them wrong. But I also think that there can be more argument about the current situation.
The male-female divide isn’t the only one that affects an artist’s success. It also matters where you live. If it’s a small country in terms of population, it’s hard to get attention beyond your borders. Think about it.
So I found it interesting that a Moroccan named Hicham Daoudi, the managing director of Art Holding Morocco, has taken matters into his hands, starting a promotional program for artists from his home country. In October, 2010, he started the first international Marrakech art fair, held at the Es Saadi Palace hotel, which included 31 galleries — 19 from Europe, mostly French, ten from northern Africa and two from the Middle East — according to The Art Newspaper. The second edition took place in October with 48 galleries (right), and the 2012 fair dates have been set.
More recently, I read that Daoudi has given the Pompidou Center in Paris a three-year €450,000 grant (€150,000 a year) that must be spent on art by Moroccan artists. He was reportedly thinking about making a similar, but smaller grant (€100,000 a year) to a South African museum for the same reason.
On my trip to an arts forum sponsored by the Palazzo Strozzo Foundation in Florence last month, I met an artist from Morocco, and asked him about it. He dismissed the gesture as more about Daoudi, who he said was trying to enhance the value of his own art holdings, than about Moroccan artists.
Could be. But what’s wrong with trying to raise the profile of artists from your country? Whatever his motive, is Daoudi doing a bad thing? I don’t think so; he’s not choosing the artists, or their works, just their nationality.
The Moroccan artists likened Daoudi’s move to affirmative action, and said he’d rather make it on his own. Still, I had to wonder: he had managed, somehow, to make it into the European market. Would he have felt the same if he were working and showing only at home?
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Marrakech Art Fair