The National Gallery of Australia has unveiled a radical gender equity plan that will require new acquisitions, commissions and exhibitions to represent a split of 40 per cent women artists, 40 per cent men and 20 per cent people identifying outside the gender binary.
The publication on International Women’s Day of the five-year plan, which also addresses gender equity issues in all aspects of the operation of the gallery, follows the gallery’s Know My Name initiative, which celebrates the work of women artists, while recognising just 25 per cent of the work in the gallery’s collection is made by women.
The gallery’s Natasha Bullock: ‘We’re doing this to bring about that structural change’.
“We were really open and transparent about the lack of representation of women artists in our acquisitions and our exhibition program over the past 40 years,” said Natasha Bullock, chair of the gender equity working group. “But it was not long into that process that we realised this could be the basis of something much larger than just an exhibition. So it started to become a whole gallery initiative.”
Ms Bullock said the NGA had since examined all areas of its operation from staffing to the gender mix of its governing bodies.
“You start to see other things,” she said. “For instance, you go into the bookshop and realise there are not as many books about women artists as there are about men. We did a big review of the whole building and where those inequities might exist. It became larger than simply art even though art is of course the basis from which we start.”
The working group did “a lot of research” before arriving at the 40/40/20 split to which it now aspires.
“We really didn’t want to be advocating for a binary split — male/female — which then includes a large portion of the Australian population who don’t identify by those terms. The 20 per cent is diverse gender. It can be how anyone describes themselves outside that gender binary.”
Addressing criticism from some quarters that a gallery should not set gender-based targets, Ms Bullock agreed the quality of individual work was paramount.
“I’d really like it if we didn’t have to do this,” she said. “It would be an equitable society if we didn’t have to do this. At the end of the day the quality of the work is fundamental, regardless of what sex or gender you are. However, we also know that there have been thousands of years where this hasn’t happened. We know the patriarchy is systemic and the only way you make changes is through structural change. We’re doing this to bring about that structural change with a view to not having to do it in the future.”
The 2019 Countess Report found there had been improvements in gender equity in parts of the Australian arts landscape. Representation of women artists in public galleries and major museums had increased by between 10 per cent and 20 per cent in the three years since the previous report, while a little more than half the winners of art prizes in that time were female. However, the report said, State galleries and museums “continue to significantly under-represent women”.
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