Art and a Lack of History

I had an unexpectedly intense day.

I went with my friend, B, to the Brooklyn Museum of Art this afternoon as part of our New York Museum Tour. A friend of hers had tipped her off to the fantastic and provocative exhibition of Yinka Shonibare MBE ‘s work (an amazing exhibit, that you should make a trip to see), and so we trudged all the way (phew!) to Brooklyn, a rare venture for Manhattanites.

Upon paying our preferred donation of $1 (BMA is a suggested donation venue, Goddess love them, as we are quite poor, but if you can afford more, please do so!), we attempted to get our bearings by perusing the pictorial directory. At this point B became very excited by something in a picture- ‘The Dinner Party’ by Judy Chicago. I looked at B with my customary blend of curiosity and ignorance. B has an excellent background in Art History and Museum Studies, so I am quite accustomed to her vast knowledge surpassing my own, especially in the art world. However, there was shock on B’s face when she realized that I did not know of Ms. Chicago.

‘The Dinner Party’ is the single biggest piece of feminist art ever acknowledged, B informed me with a look tinged with disbelief and, perhaps, a bit of horror. We then skipped over the Shonibare exhibit, heading directly to the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

Let me coo for a moment- How AMAZING is it that an art museum has a permanent gallery dedicated to feminist art? I’ve never heard of this before, and in the wake of such an experience I’m a bit saddened by this. Ideally feminist art would have a role in art of all types and in many galleries and there would be no need for a specially designated ‘feminist section’, but this is not yet an ideal world. I wish I had had the opportunity to visit a Center for Feminist Art before I was 24 years old, but I am grateful for today, however hurtful it may have been.

I was utterly unprepared for this installation. How could I have expected it? The catalog itself reports it as consisting of:

39 dinner place settings of porcelain flatware (fork, knife and spoon), porcelain chalice, and decorated porcelain plate. Each
setting is laid out on a separate embroidered textile runner. Thirteen
place settings are on each side (48 feet long) of a triangular table
draped with a white felt cloth, with a triangular millennium runner at
each of three corners. Each of the settings represents one of
thirty-nine historically significant women. The table sits on a floor
of 2304 porcelain triangular tiles (in 129 units) inscribed with the
names of 999 significant women. Ok, so it’s a big table set for dinner and there are lots of women’s
names. Cool. This will be interesting. Right. How can I tell you what
it was like walking into that room? Rather, walking into the room was
just what I expected. Each setting is quite particular, and placed in a
mostly chronological order. First? ‘Primordial Goddess’

Ok. That makes sense. 

Next? ‘Fertile Goddess’

Sure. 

Of note, the plates at each setting are decorated in personalized
floral/butterfly/vulva patterns. I add floral and butterfly to the
description mostly because the plaque at the exhibit did so. My
impression of the plates was overwhelmingly linked to feminine power,
to clitoral and sexual potency, power, depth, mystery, and strength.
There were cunts all over this table, each beautiful and different.
Each cunt-plate brought its own sacred history to the table.

Next? ‘Ishtar’, ‘Kali’, ‘Snake Goddess’, ‘Sophia’, ‘Amazon’,
‘Hatshepsut’, ‘Judith’, ‘Sappho’, ‘Boadaceia’, ‘Hypatia’, ‘Marcella’,
‘Saint Bridget’. . .

By this point, I had finished one third
of the table, and I was starting to get worried. The women who earned a
place at the table were assumedly at the top of the list, a list that
involves more than a thousand names. Only 39 received special settings,
and I guess I assumed that of those 39 I would know a vast majority. I
was discovering how naïve that assumption had been.

‘Theodora’, ‘Hrosvitha’, ‘Trotula’, ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine’, ‘Hildegarde
of Bingen’, ‘Petronilla de Meath’, ‘Christine de Pisan’, ‘Isabella
d’Este’, ‘Elizabeth R.’, ‘Artemisia Gentileschi’. . .

I
recognized two of these names, and I could tell you about one of them.
The names continued almost in defiance of my ignorance. A grief I had
never experienced began to overwhelm me, and I felt tears begin to well
up. I have never before cried because of a piece of art. Art has moved
me toward thought, toward debate, toward laughter, toward anger, toward
many things- but never tears. Of the more than thousand names
celebrated in ‘The Dinner Party”, I would recognize a perhaps generous
figure of 100. 

Less than 10%.

‘Anna van Schurman’,
‘Anne Hutchinson’, ‘Sacajawea’, ‘Caroline Herschel’, ‘Mary
Wollstonecraft’, ‘Sojourner Truth’, ‘Susan B. Anthony’, ‘Elizabeth
Blackwell’, ‘Emily Dickinson’, ‘Ethel Smyth’. . .

I realized
even more so, that at least 50% of the names I recognized belonged to
women about which I knew nothing. For example, I could not have told
you yesterday (I am very sorry to admit) who Mary Wollstonecraft was or
what contributions she had made. A horrifying thought occurred to me:
should a similar celebration of man’s historical contributions be
constructed in such a manner, I would easily recognize at least 50% of
the names. I would probably also be able to explain in depth the
contributions of at least 15% of them. Of course, that’s just a guess.

I don’t remember at what point I began to cry, but I know it was after
I had left the table settings and had moved to the Herstory Board
section- a chronology/brief description of the contributions of every
name on exhibit. I felt as though I’d been punched in the gut.
Somewhere deep within something had been stolen from me. My education
had failed me. My culture had failed me. I had failed myself. How could
I know so little about the power of the feminine? How had I missed my
own history so succinctly? Who was Margaret Sanger? Natalie Barney?
Virginia Woolf and Georgia O’Keefe were names familiar to me, but they
provided little comfort after the onslaught of the unfamiliar. 

I cried. I cried for myself. For my culture. For the education that I
and my sisters and brothers were missing. It was a quiet cry, privately
witnessed by an almost unending row of names.
I sat down on a bench
and tried to center myself, attempting to pull myself back from the
brink of destructive self-pity, searching for the redemptive righteous
anger that I knew must be on the other side of such a deep wound. While
I waited a man came over to the lady sitting next to me on the bench
and commented on the ‘fascinating’ board of names.

Fascinating.

Even now I am filled with an anger and a hurt that is beyond my ability to capture.

Fascinating. 

I understand how a board filled with the history of influential women
one has never heard of could be a fascinating concept. I understand and
respect this man’s ability to recognize a resource he had not
previously encountered. I understand to a certain extent. 

But it goes so much deeper than the cognitive whimsy of a ‘fascinating’
history display. This is personal. It is my mother, my
great-grandmother, my as-yet-undreamt-of-daughter. It is me. It is the
mantle I inherited by being born into this body, or rather more so by
living in it. It is the lie that has been perpetuated by silence. It is
the gaping holes in my history. In me. It is the lack of acknowledgment
of those holes- my previous inability to even conceptualize how many
holes there might be.

I knew, of course , that there was much
of the history and contributions of women that I didn’t know, but I had
never before been confronted so tangibly by the vastness of the unknown
of feminine beauty, strength, thought, and power.

I am enraged.

I am crying.

I am crying, and I am enraged by the bleeding hole where my knowledge
of my grandmothers should be. I have been robbed. So have you.

We, all of us, have been robbed by patriarchal thieves bent on
silencing the brilliance of half our forebears. This cannot stand, but
who will stand with me?

Why do we allow such silence? What do
we do about it? How can I turn this wounded-ness, this anger, into a
vehicle for change?

How can we?