By Carter Seaton
HQ 59 | AUTUMN 2006
While Chinese tradition observes 2006 as the Year of the Dog, the calendar at the Huntington Museum of Art calls it A Year of Women. This celebration of women artists came to fruition almost by accident, although the scant notice historically given women artists had long bothered Margaret Mary Layne, HMOA’s Executive Director. As an art history major at Marshall University she realized the standard survey text, The History of Art, listed no women until its 1986 edition. None, period!
When Jenine Culligan became the museum’s senior curator in 1999 she felt that works by artists of color or women artists were under-represented in its collection. That resonated with Layne, then HMOA’s Development Director. After Layne became Executive Director in 2002, she encouraged the Board of Directors to craft an initiative in the museum’s strategic plan to acquire and exhibit more work by women artists, artists of color and other under-represented groups. Four years later, Layne and Culligan, who knew of art collector Dr. Gina Puzzuoli Miller, began talking at length about curating a show from the Charleston-based psychiatrist’s private collection of over 400 works representing women artists from the mid-19th century to the present. Following meetings with Puzzuoli, her entire collection became the maiden show of a year of exhibits and activities.
Unexpectedly, other opportunities for shows featuring women artists or women’s issues materialized: a traveling exhibit of quilts by African-American women; a dramatic sculpture exhibit featuring a husband’s response to his wife’s battle with ovarian cancer; and a solo show for Charleston artist Paula Clendenin in the new Curator’s Choice series. A pattern, a theme had begun to emerge, Layne said, making the decision to choose all women artists for the annual Walter Gropius Masters’ Workshops an easy one.
With a year of exhibitions and workshops set, a 40 member Women’s Advisory Council was formed to serve as a programming think-tank, and as ambassadors to disseminate information about the shows. The list includes educators, business executives, artists, musicians, health care and social service professionals and West Virginia’s First Lady.
To read the rest of “The Huntington Museum of Art’s A Year of Women,” please visit the Back Issues page of our website to purchase this issue of the Huntington Quarterly.
