A new exhibit in Ghent, Belgium at the Museum of Fine Arts has a subject that is a sad comment. Titled Unforgettable: Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, the exhibit actually works to recover the forgotten work of women artists in the Dutch and Flemish Golden Age.
Opening on the eve of International Women’s Day, the exhibit highlights the careers of women who worked in Antwerp, Amsterdam, Haarlem and other cities as contemporaries of the famed ‘Dutch Masters’ but whose work, though highly regarded at the time, has been largely hidden in both art history and museums.
The curators argue that women were not merely passive muses or subjects for artists, but active participants in the flourishing artistic economy of the Low Countries. Many took commissions, ran workshops and sold works in the bustling art markets of Antwerp and Amsterdam. In their time, some of them sold pictures for prices rivaling those of male painters, and a few were elected to painters’ guilds.
The exhibit runs to May 31.
