Meaghan Clarke – författare

Fair Women was the Victorian equivalent of a ‘blockbuster’ exhibition. Organised by a committee of women, it opened to great fanfare in the Grafton Galleries in London, and was comprised of both historical and contemporary portraits of women as well as decorative objects. Meaghan Clarke argues that the exhibition challenged contemporary assumptions about the representation of women and the superficiality of female collectors. The Fair Women phenomenon complicated gender stereotypes and foregrounded women as cultural arbiters. This book uncovers a wide range of texts and images to reveal that Fair Women brought together fashion, modernity and gender politics in new and surprising ways. It shows that, while invariably absent in institutional histories, women were vital to the development of the modern blockbuster exhibition. This book will be of interest to scholars in art and gender studies, museum studies, feminist art history, women artists and art history.

Critical Voices is a fascinating account of women writing about art in Britain at the turn of the twentieth century. Meaghan Clarke employs extensive original research in order to demonstrate the significant contribution made by women to the art world and draws on a diversity of sources, including diaries, letters and periodicals, to highlight the many different forms their criticism took. Focusing in particular on the work of three women - Alice Meynell, Florence Fenwick-Miller and Elizabeth Robins Pennell - Clarke argues that in order to understand fully art debates of the time it is essential we broaden our understanding of the role of women in the construction of art history. John Singer Sargent, James MacNeill Whistler, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, Elizabeth Butler, William Holman Hunt, Frederic Leighton, Walter Sickert, Henrietta Rae, and Rosa Bonheur are among the artists considered.

Fair Women was the Victorian equivalent of a ‘blockbuster’ exhibition. Organised by a committee of women, it opened to great fanfare in the Grafton Galleries in London, and was comprised of both historical and contemporary portraits of women as well as decorative objects. Meaghan Clarke argues that the exhibition challenged contemporary assumptions about the representation of women and the superficiality of female collectors. The Fair Women phenomenon complicated gender stereotypes and foregrounded women as cultural arbiters. This book uncovers a wide range of texts and images to reveal that Fair Women brought together fashion, modernity and gender politics in new and surprising ways. It shows that, while invariably absent in institutional histories, women were vital to the development of the modern blockbuster exhibition. This book will be of interest to scholars in art and gender studies, museum studies, feminist art history, women artists and art history.