February 25 – June 16 2024
Throughout the history of art, women have been systematically disregarded, excluded, or treated as exceptions. Today, many international museums rediscover women artists from the Middle Ages to Modernity and appreciate their contributions to the development of painting.
Numerous masterpieces by women artists have languished unseen in museum storages. In cooperation with the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Arp Museum presents a wide-ranging exhibition featuring works by 51 women painters, drawn from major European museums and private collections.
Alongside artists such as Artemisia Gentileschi,Élisabeth Vigée-Le Brun, and Mary Cassatt, who were celebrated in their own times, the exhibiton also shows women masters whose rediscovery is long overdue. All of them overcame considerable obstacles and succeeded in embarking upon their own artistic pathways.
The spectrum expands from medieval book painters working in convents to Baroque artists who received artistic training in their father's studios, and all the way to modern pioneers who stood up for equality.
As part of the exhibition, you are invited to attend the conference "Il genio della donna. Donne e arte da Bologna all’Europa", which is dedicated exclusively to women artists and discusses the latest studies in this field. The conference can be accessed online using the following link.