Often, when issues of inequity come up–whether on the Hollywood screen, or in Congress, or in publishing, people take tallies. Tallies can be illuminating. Artist Micol Hebron has been recently taking such tallies of the art and gallery world as a way of trying to have some hard conversations about continuing gender inequity in art that we would prefer to think no longer exist.
So here’s a tally from yesterday’s For Your Art event, Artists Read Baldessari, a celebration of a new two volume set of John Baldessari’s writing edited by Meg Cranston and Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Of the 51 artists who read:
- 33 were men
- 18 were women
So almost twice as many men as women.
And also, of 51 artists who read:
- 47 were white
- 4 were people of color (there was one woman of color. ONE.)
The overwhelming majority of the artists who read were young, under 40–all Los Angeles artists. What’s going on here?
Ten Red Hen 