Call for Papers:
WAS - Women Artists Shows.Salons.Societies
Group Exhibitions of Women Artists 1876-1976

In partnership with the Artls project, AWARE introduces WAS (Women Artists Shows.Salons.Societies), a research project focusing on group exhibitions of women artists. Our ambition is to build a descriptive and analytical catalogue of these exhibitions from the end of the 19th to the end of the 20th century and to start reflecting on their specific history, through the study of the evolution of the social, cultural, and institutional conditions that permitted or made them necessary through the analysis of the various levels of mediation and organisation at work in these shows, or also through the examination of their symbolical functioning and critical response.

This first symposium, which will launch the program, considers a moment when the chronology of women group shows is less known (the more recent period will be the subject of a later symposium). Starting with the first Woman Pavilion run by women within the Centennial International Exhibition of 1876 in Philadelphia to the exhibition Women artists 1550-1950 organised in 1976-1977 by Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, this symposium seeks to examine the phenomenon of collective exhibitions of women artists in all its extent and diversity:
• international exhibitions such as Les femmes artistes d'Europe exposent au Jeu de Paume in 1937, the 80 anniversary of which we shall celebrate this year,
• or national like Contribuição da Mulher às Artes Plasticas no País organised in 1960 by Mario Pedrosa at the Museu de Arte Moderna in São Paulo,
• exhibitions organised by the artists themselves, like the Women’s International Art Club at the Grafton Galleries, London in 1900,
• or organised by gallerists, like Exhibition by 31 Women by Peggy Guggenheim in 1943 at her gallery, Art of this Century,
• or organised by museums like Women in art at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston in 1953,
• historical retrospectives like Exposition rétrospective d’art féminin organised by the sculptor Charlotte Besnard in 1908 at the Lyceum in Paris
• or contemporary art shows such as Greek women painters, in 1933 at the Galerie de Nina Papazafeiropoulou-Rok in Athens.

The goal of this first symposium is to establish a chronology and a geography of group exhibitions of women artists, to attempt a reconstruction and a cartography of their place and networks in the modern art world thanks to the digital technology of Artls (a global database of exhibition catalogues, with integrated geographical and quantitative analysis) and more classical resources.

The presentations can be either problematised case studies or larger analyses interrogating, for instance, the processes of professionalisation, the critical or commercial reception of these exhibitions, their position vis-à-vis the avant-gardes or historiography.

Each paper will last 20 minutes. They will be published following examination by an editorial committee, in a special issue of the Artls Bulletin, which is co-published by the Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique, the Ecole normale supérieure . and Purdue University Press.

Researchers working on collective exhibitions of women artists interested in this program, but unable to attend this first symposium are kindly encouraged to contact the scientific committee to inform them about their research.

Paper proposals:
Proposals for papers are to be sent to WomenArtistsShowsgmail.com by 15 September 2017 at the lastest. They should be in the form of a résumé (2000 characters max.), preceded by a title and accompanied by a curriculum vitae that includes a list of publications.
Notification of acceptance will be sent by 29th September 2017 at the latest.
The papers can be written in either French or English.

Scientific committee:
Catherine Dossin, Associate Professor, Purdue University, Lafayette (United Sates), vice director of d’Artls (project based at ENS-Ulm)
Camille Morineau, President of AWARE, director of exhibitions and collections at the Monnaie de Paris
Hanna Alkema, Head of scientific programs for AWARE