Où Sont Les Femmes? Enquête Sur Les Artistes Femmes Du Musée

Exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille, 20 October 2023 - 11 March 2024

Women are everywhere on the walls of the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille as muses, models or allegories, but they are still rare as creators. Of the nearly 60,000 works held by the museum, only 135 are attributed to women artists, and apart from a few big names (Geneviève Asse, Rosa Bonheur, Camille Claudel, Sonia Delaunay, Marie Laurencin...), the work of the 80 artists in the Lille collections is often little-known.

This exhibition catalogue offers a genuine investigation into the reasons for the invisibility of women artists. Comprising around a hundred works - paintings, drawings and sculptures - it traces the varied careers of these female artists from the 17th century to the present day.

The book seeks to understand how these works found their way into the collections of the Palais des Beaux-Arts, an undeniable sign of institutional recognition, and offers an analysis of the factors contributing to the exclusion of women artists from art history, in the form of three chapters corresponding to the three stages of artistic practice: before (access to training), during (the choice of subjects and techniques) and after (the reception and dissemination of works).