Museums Without Men is a program initiated by art historian and Guardian art critic Katy Hessel, along with five of the world’s largest museums (including Tate Britain and The Met), to create substantive audio guides of dozens of female and gender-nonconforming artists that have often been overshadowed by their male contemporaries.
This program was initiated as a reflection into how Hessel found it difficult to locate works by women and gender non-conforming artists within the prestigious institutions. Even when she does, pieces by women and gender non-conforming artists are usually presented in dialogue with pieces by their male contemporaries, as if they are unable to stand on their own. Hence, she initiated Museums Without Men as a way to reimagine the story of art without men, to give women and gender non-conforming artists their much-deserved spotlight, reflecting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of Gender Equality.
Katy Hessel is no stranger to creating audio outputs out of stories of women and gender non-conforming artists. She’s the mastermind behind The Great Women Artists, a podcast that highlights the careers of great women artists from art history through interviews with artists, curators, writers, and other art world professionals. The audio guide’s title, Museums Without Men, also references her 2023 book. The Story of Art Without Men is a bestseller in which Hessel weaves through the canons of art history by exclusively referring to women artists and their pieces.
Throughout the March 2024 Women’s History Month, the audio guides were available on the participating museum’s websites and on Hessel’s own site. The sound piece will offer visitors and the general public a comprehensive look into the artworks and lives of women and gender non-conforming artists, helping visitors to fully appreciate and understand their works.
The selected artists include stellar names like Bisa Butler, Wangechi Mutu, Rosa Bonheur, and Lucie Rie, all powerhouse names.
Museums Without Men aims to tackle the very real problem of underrepresentation of women and gender non-conforming artists in museums, reputable art institutions at the forefront of public art education. The 2022 Burns Halperin Report found that only 11 percent of acquisitions in 31 US museums between 2008 and 2020 were works by female-identifying artists. A stark contrast since women account for 46.1 percent of working artists in the United States. Hence, Museums Without Men wishes to make the most of the few acquisitions museums have made and, at the same time, raise the public’s awareness of this disparity.
Each audio guide provided engaging introductions into the lives and artworks of women and gender non-conforming artists, such as one on The Horse Fair by 19th-century French artist Rosa Bonheur that’s now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The MET).
As Hessel explains, the Museums Without Men audio guide provides context as to why the piece is located in a room of female nudes painted around the same time. Which was largely due to how, as a woman, she wasn’t allowed to; horses were much more accessible, but even then she had to first obtain a permit from the French government in order to wear trousers that were required for horse fair visitors.
Stories like Bonheur’s are part of why Museums Without Men was created. It was created to show just how far humankind has progressed in terms of gender equality so that together as a society, audiences and the art system can continue to push for positive change.
Ultimately, the aim of the project, as Hessel herself writes for the Guardian, “is to show people of all backgrounds, genders, and ages that they too can be part of this conversation—perhaps the people who will one day see their art hanging on these hallowed walls.”