The Baltimore Museum of Art holds 95,000 works of art. Of that, just four percent are works made by women. For the entirety of 2020, the museum will focus on correcting this imbalance by buying only art by women artists.
Baltimore Museum of Art chief curator Asma Naeem called the effort an attempt at “re-correcting the canon.”
“There are these various subtle but consistent, pervasive markers of what is considered creative achievement, and we are trying to reset all of those markers,” she said.
The collecting initiative is part of 2020 Vision, a larger project dedicated to celebrating the achievements of female artists. Throughout the year, the museum will mount thirteen solo shows and seven thematic exhibitions that emphasize women. These exhibits will also be supported by public programs that foster conversation on women in the arts. Planned exhibits range from a display of 19th-century Lakota beadwork to a selection of videos by acclaimed South African artist Candice Breitz.
Programming for 2020 Vision has already begun. The first exhibit in the series, By Their Creative Force: American Women Modernists, opened on October 6th.