Summary Of Maura Reilly Taking The Measure Of Sexism

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The art world is perpetually sexist and racists, and curators are key to changing the masses view on art history and contemporary art voices through representation and inclusion. In order to offer up a more just and fair representation of global artistic production, mainstream (non-activist) curators need to re-envision/re-write their definitions of "greatness" to include non-whites, non-westerners, the under-privileged, and women. In Maura Reilly's essay, Taking the Measure of Sexism: Facts, Figures, and Fixes, Reilly fixates on the differences between men and women in the art world and how little has changed in the art world for women, despite decades of feminist activists. Better does not mean equal. There are about 60% women in MFA programs. …show more content…

This essay discusses transnational feminism in contemporary art and Reilly talks about her experience curating the art exhibit "Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art," which presented a selection of young to mid-career women artists from a variety of cultures. The essay examines transformations in feminist theory and contemporary art practice and talks about artists Patricia Piccinini, Dayanita Singh, and Catherine Opie. Reilly really focuses on challenging First World Feminism that assumes "sameness" among women. Instead, the show and essay acknowledge the differences in the woman's lives. "In other words, this all-women exhibition aimed to be inclusively transnational, evading restrictive boundaries as it questioned the continued privileging of masculinist cultural production from Europe and the United States within the art market, cultural institutions, and exhibition practices." Instead of being divided by geography or chronologically, the show was divided into 4 sections: Life Cycles, Identities, Politics, and Emotions. This division allows for juxtaposition for a wide range of artists that their modes of practice and sociocultural, racial, economic, and personal situations might be radically different from their own. This type of relational analysis, which places diverse, transnational works by women in dialogic relation with careful attention to co-implicated histories, seeks to produce new insights into feminist art today. The article then goes on to explain the curatorial strategy of relational analysis and how it relates to Global

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