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Trick or Tweet ArtActivistBarbie as Trickster Peace Review March 2023

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University of Huddersfield Research Portal

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“Some witchcraft you’ve done in the past twelve months!” An exploration of the transformative value of learning through the arts in professional teacher education for the lifelong learning sector

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This study is an investigation of the transformative value and impact of learning through the arts in professional teacher education for the lifelong learning sector. It has explored the extent to which meaningful and transformative learning can be stimulated and fostered through arts-based pedagogy. Arts-based practices are recognised as playing a part in the field of transformative learning theory (TLT), but literature on the use of the arts specifically within the context of lifelong teacher education is limited. This research study therefore contributes to a particular need for research in the area.A series of arts-based pedagogic approaches and interventions were designed for the investigation including collage enquiry, visual imagery, poetry, poetic enquiry, film, photographic journalism, drama, sculptural modelling, musical experience, body mapping, art gallery interventions, storytelling and reflective walking in the manner of ‘walking artists’.The research was conducted in a university in the North of England, over a period of three academic years with 59 students of mixed ages, all of whom were pre-service teachers in training. As the research was clearly bounded by context and fixed time frames, a case study approach was used, and connected to facet methodology. The methodology includes a creative aspect, drawing upon a/r/tography, in the form of a visual narrative, which has been created as a series of concertina booklets. This is presented as a form of research ‘capital’. Research methods with participants did not include art-based research methods, to avoid potential for confusing overlap with the arts-based pedagogy under investigation. Access to research participants was not an issue, but the ethical implications of practitioner insider research were carefully considered, particularly with regard to positionality and issues of power which is inherent in conducting practitioner research with students. Data was collected over a period of three academic years and analysed using a reflexive thematic approach. Arts-based pedagogy was found to create an invitation which offered protection, pleasure and play, freedom and liberation and the opportunity for self-expression. The capacity of the arts to ‘puncture’, awaken and enable vivid memory and recall was revealed, together with an immediacy of impact. Arts-based teaching and learning was found to illuminate and be a catalyst for deep and reflective thinking. It promoted learning in the affective domain and the development of critical consciousness, leading to transformative growth and change. As a theoretical framework, transformative learning theory framed and informed the research study. Through the concepts and lens of transformative learning theory, the analysis, interpretation and discussion of data was completed. In particular, the study has found that arts-based learning in alternative pedagogical spaces such as art galleries can be highly effective, increasing awareness and commitment to issues of social injustice and social inequity. The research has found that transformative learning can occur through critical witness and response to art, and does not require students to engage in the making or creating of art. An educator does not need to be a creative arts practitioner to teach through the arts. The study concludes that arts-based teaching and learning can make an enriching, dynamic and significant contribution to professional teacher education for the lifelong sector, and that through arts-based pedagogy, transformative growth, learning and change can be fostered, stimulated, and realised.

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ArtActivistBarbie feature in US 'The Ultimate Guide to Barbie' glossy magazine published to coincide with release of Barbie Movie June 2023. pp 84-85

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ArtActivistBarbie feature in US 'The Ultimate Guide to Barbie' glossy magazine published to coincide with release of Barbie Movie June 2023. pp 84-85

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Cultural policy representation as adult education: A feminist visual discourse analysis of monumental and sculptural gendered narratives. Conference paper presented at European Society for Research in the Education of Adults (ESREA). February 2024 

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Cultural policy representation as adult education: A feminist visual discourse analysis of monumental and sculptural gendered narratives. Conference paper presented at European Society for Research in the Education of Adults (ESREA). February 2024 

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Recording of Public Lecture for IWD March 2023

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Recording of Public Lecture for IWD March 2023

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ISR: Art Activist Barbie - What makes for good activism?

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ArtActivistBarbie is making her second appearance at Edge Hill to celebrate International Women's Day with us. The renowned Twitter star [@BarbieReports] made her ISR debut last August at our Feminist Imaginaries Research Conference where, true to her mischievous and equality-seeking form, she pointed out that the overwhelming majority of artworks on our campus sculpture trail are by men. ArtActivistBarbie has a finely tuned eye when it comes to calling out gender inequality in the arts, and she is not afraid of making a scene. Her provocative wit and fabulous wardrobe lend themselves to staged interventions, predominantly in art galleries and museums. Posing with her tiny, pithy placards, ArtActivistBarbie is photographed gently mocking or drawing attention to problematic exhibits and the images are shared with millions of Twitter users. She also challenges the biases inherent in so many curatorial labels and statements.

ArtActivistBarbie seeks to change the practices of these institutions, the bulk of whose collections have historically been commissioned and produced by men, representing many centuries of male power and privilege. Over 94% of artworks in publicly funded galleries are by white men and many objectify and demean women and girls. Making visible the lives and experiences of women and minority ethnic groups is vital for a more just and equal society. This is becoming more widely recognised and ArtActivistBarbie has featured in the Guardian and the BBC. She was recently invited to present to Parliament (where she made a little mischief in the hallowed halls of Westminster).

Dr Sarah Williamson, the mind behind ArtActivistBarbie, is gratified at the attention that her activism has garnered. She notes how this playful approach subverts the vacuous and stereotypically feminine image of Barbie to draw attention to the male gaze and its problematic impact on people's identities and opportunities.

Sarah says "I am really looking forward to this event to celebrate International Women's Day. ArtActivistBarbie is a truth-sayer with a feminist gaze, and I will enjoy sharing some of her playful provocations in what she likes to describe as 'Patriarchal Palaces of Painting'! Once you have seen things through the eyes of ArtActivistBarbie, you may never see them in the same way again!"

Do join us for Sarah's webinar where she will discuss the redeployment of Barbie as a fearless feminist activist. She will talk about some of the reactions to ArtActivistBarbie's interventions from enthusiastic embracing by visitors at galleries and museums, to bemusement and mild panic from security guards. In addition, Sarah will explore being an activist scholar and 'good activism' for social justice. We hope she will inspire creative approaches to pedagogy and activism that promote a fairer world.
Dr Victoria Foster and Dr Sarah Williamson

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ArtActivistBarbie Celebrates International Women's Day with ISR - Institute for Social Responsibility

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ArtActivistBarbie is making her second appearance at Edge Hill to celebrate International Women's Day with us. The renowned Twitter star [@BarbieReports] made her ISR debut last August at our Feminist Imaginaries Research Conference where, true to her mischievous and equality-seeking form, she pointed out that the overwhelming majority of artworks on our campus sculpture trail [...]

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Williamson, S. (2020). In Clover et al. 'Feminist Adult Educator’s Guide to Aesthetic, Creative and Disruptive strategies in Museums and Community'. Open access resource: https://onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca/comarts/feminist-adult-educators-guide/

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Williamson, S. (2020). In Clover et al. 'Feminist Adult Educator’s Guide to Aesthetic, Creative and Disruptive strategies in Museums and Community'. Open access resource: https://onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca/comarts/feminist-adult-educators-guide/

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Huddersfield Centre for Research in Education and Society (HudCRES) Newsletter Issue 5 - Jun 2018

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Read Huddersfield Centre for Research in Education and Society (HudCRES) Newsletter Issue 5 - Jun 2018 by HudCRES on Issuu and browse thousands of ...

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Times Higher Education Awards 2018 'Most Innovative Teacher' Sarah Williamson shortlisted for the 'Oscars of Higher Education Teaching'. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/the-awards-2018-shortlist-announced

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Times Higher Education Awards 2018 'Most Innovative Teacher' Sarah Williamson shortlisted for the 'Oscars of Higher Education Teaching'. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/the-awards-2018-shortlist-announced

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At a time when the role of universities seems to be contested from all sides, it is more important than ever to celebrate their achievements and their contribution to society. It is also all the more vital that institutions learn from best practice across the sector to ensure that they maximise their impact. Best practice abounds in the shortlist for this year's Times Higher Education Awards: no matter the hurdles that arise, institutions continue, it seems, to clear them and smoothly accelerate towards their next goal. THE is proud to shine a spotlight on the individuals and teams who underpin this success.

This year's THE Awards ceremony takes place on 29 November at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London.

Full details at www.the-awards.co.uk

International Collaboration of the Year
Sponsored by Microsoft
Research Project of the Year: STEM

Research Project of the Year: Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences
Sponsored by Elsevier
Technological Innovation of the Year
Sponsored by Jisc
International Impact Award
Sponsored by Huawei
Outstanding Contribution to the Local Community

Most Innovative Teacher of the Year
Sponsored by Advance HE
Outstanding Support for Students
Sponsored by Anderson Quigley
Business School of the Year

Outstanding Contribution to Leadership Development
Sponsored by Advance HE
Widening Participation or Outreach Initiative of the Year

Outstanding Research Supervisor of the Year
Sponsored by UKCGE
Outstanding Entrepreneurial University
Sponsored by NCEE
Excellence and Innovation in the Arts
Sponsored by Adobe
Most Innovative Contribution to Business-University Collaboration
Sponsored by HSBC
THE DataPoints Merit Award

Sponsored by THE DataPoints

For this THE DataPoints Merit Award, we used our World University Rankings data to compare institutions' reputation scores with their research performance, identifying unsung heroes whose research excellence does not attract the attention it merits.

The Lord Dearing Lifetime Achievement Award
Sponsored by Amity University
There is no shortlist for this category. The winner, chosen by Times Higher Education, will be announced at the awards ceremony.

University of the Year

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At a time when the role of universities seems to be contested from all sides, it is more important than ever to celebrate their achievements and their contribution to society. It is also all the more vital that institutions learn from best practice across the sector to ensure that they maximise their impact.

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'The Feminist Museum Hack as an aesthetic practice of possibility'. https://rela.ep.liu.se/article/view/899   

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'The Feminist Museum Hack as an aesthetic practice of possibility'. https://rela.ep.liu.se/article/view/899   

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BARBIE is often subject to fierce criticism from feminists. But now the doll with long blonde hair, porcelain skin, pouting lips and wasp waist has been enlisted as the invaluable ally of an innovative University of Huddersfield researcher who campaigns on gender inequality in art galleries and museums.

Sarah Williamson - a Senior Lecturer in the University's School of Education and Professional Development - has gained a global following for her ArtActivistBarbie campaign, which she describes as "radical ventriloquism". She equips a Barbie with a tiny placard drawing attention to an aspect of gender imbalance, photographs the doll in situ and posts the results on social media.

For example, Barbie went to the National Gallery in London and - with Nelson's Column in the background - pointed out that it has 2,300 paintings by male artists but just 21 by women. This was one of the @BarbieReports Tweets that earned a worldwide response for Sarah, who has also penned a blog in which she describes her deployment of Barbie as a form of "culture jamming".

The latest development is a display at Manchester Central Library, where - until 6 September - Barbie makes her contribution to an exhibition dealing with the legacy of Peterloo. There has been an ArtActivistBarbie International Flashmob Day, plus two free workshop events and Sarah will be researching the impact of these.

Men generally are fully-clothed and gallant and heroic, while the women are often looking demurely into a mirror, engaged in the ritual of a toilette, reading a book or maybe a bit of sewing. Or they might have nothing on at all - painted for the male gaze."

Sarah Williamson

There might be elements of humour and irony in the Barbie campaign, but the aim is serious.

"Art galleries and museums are seen by many as trusted, authoritative and influential places and the ArtActivistBarbie project researches the potential of these places as spaces for action to educate for social justice and promote change," says Sarah, who has also harnessed the power of the Post-it Note as a way to draw attention to gender issues.

Working with Professor Darlene Clover of the University of Victoria in Canada, Sarah is co-author of an article that describes the development of the Feminist Museum Hack.

Students and other participants visited a museum in Canada and a gallery in Huddersfield, appending Post-it Notes that mount a feminist critique of certain artworks. Before a hack, Sarah provides her students with a list of questions to ponder.

"For example, how many works of art are by men and how many are by women? When women are represented, how are they represented, and how are men represented? Men generally are fully-clothed and gallant and heroic, while the women are often looking demurely into a mirror, engaged in the ritual of a toilette, reading a book or maybe a bit of sewing. Or they might have nothing on at all - painted for the male gaze."

After three days one tweet alone had reached something like 50,000 impressions. I realised I was on to something and so I have continued to develop ArtActivistBarbie."

Sarah Williamson

Participants write their observations on Post-it Notes which are then - with the permission of the gallery - placed adjacent to the relevant artworks, forming a collage. A photographic record is kept and a discussion session explores the thinking behind the comments.

"I have had students get quite angry, saying things like 'as a non-white young woman, where am I in this gallery?'" said Sarah, who was shortlisted for the Times Education Supplement's Most Innovative Teacher award in 2018. She specialises in arts-based pedagogy in lifelong learning and arts-based enquiry and researches the impact of the arts in professional education.

The development of the Feminist Museum Hack is one of the outcomes of a five-year project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Professor Clover has visited the University of Huddersfield and worked with students who are training to be lecturers and teachers.

"She introduced this notion of hacking into a museum or gallery to uncover what's not being said," explained Sarah.

The Barbie concept was a spin-off. Instead of giving students Post-it Notes prior to a gallery visit, Sarah provided them with dolls instead and the means of making diminutive placards.

"It's radical ventriloquism in a way! It worked really well. I took some photos, put them on Twitter and after three days one tweet alone had reached something like 50,000 impressions. I realised I was on to something and so I have continued to develop ArtActivistBarbie.

"She has her own social media account and has gained over 2,000 followers in eight months. The pinned tweet now has reached over 108,000 impressions, with nearly 12,000 engagements," said Sarah, who is currently writing a book chapter on the project.

"The National Gallery has stated on its website that it was increasingly concerned at the lack of women in their collections and was trying to redress that. And they said they were responding to comments on social media," added Sarah.

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Researcher gains global following for ArtActivistBarbie campaign - University of Huddersfield

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BARBIE is often subject to fierce criticism from feminists. But now the doll with long blonde hair, porcelain skin, pouting lips and wasp waist has been enlisted as the invaluable ally of an innovative University of Huddersfield researcher who campaigns on gender inequality in art galleries and museums. Sarah Williamson - a Senior Lecturer in the University's School of Education and Professional Development - has gained a global following for her ArtActivistBarbie campaign, which she describes as "radical ventriloquism".

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'Feminist Critique and the Museum: Educating for a Critical Consciousness'. https://brill.com/view/title/58960  

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'Feminist Critique and the Museum: Educating for a Critical Consciousness'. https://brill.com/view/title/58960  

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Thousands of diverse museums, including art galleries and heritage sites, exist around the world today and they draw millions of people, audiences who come to view the exhibitions and artefacts and equally importantly, to learn from them about the world and themselves. This makes museums active public educators who imagine, visualise, represent and story the past and the present with the specific aim of creating knowledge. Problematically, the visuals and narratives used to inform visitors are never neutral. Feminist cultural and adult education studies have shown that all too frequently they include epistemologies of mastery that reify the histories and deeds of 'great men.' Despite pressures from feminist scholars and professionals, normative public museums continue to be rife with patriarchal ideologies that hide behind referential illusions of authority and impartiality to mask the many problematic ways gender is represented and interpreted, the values imbued in those representations and interpretations and their complicity in the cancellation of women's stories in favour of conventional masculine historical accounts that shore up male superiority, entitlement, privilege, and dominance.

Feminist Critique and the Museum: Educating for a Critical Consciousness problematises museums as it illustrates ways they can be become pedagogical spaces of possibility. This edited volume showcases the imaginative social critique that can be found in feminist exhibitions, and the role that women's museums around the world are attempting to play in terms of transforming our understandings of women, gender, and the potential of museums to create inclusive narratives.

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Thousands of diverse museums, including art galleries and heritage sites, exist around the world today and they draw millions of people, audiences who come to view the exhibitions and artefacts and equally importantly, to learn from them about the world and themselves.

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Book chapter: "The A/r/tographic Re-Deployment of Barbie in Museums and Galleries as a Feminist Activist and Pedagogue" https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004440180/BP000022.xml

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Book chapter: "The A/r/tographic Re-Deployment of Barbie in Museums and Galleries as a Feminist Activist and Pedagogue" https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004440180/BP000022.xml

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‪Senior Lecturer, University of Huddersfield‬ - ‪‪Cited by 122‬‬ - ‪adult education‬ - ‪arts-based pedagogy‬ - ‪arts-based research‬ - ‪teacher education‬ - ‪creative pedagogy‬

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As a feminist, qualitative researcher and activist, I address ' enduring and emergent questions of gendered social justice', ( Olesen, 2018, p. 151) through the staging and posing of Barbie dolls in art galleries and museums to draw attention to, and ask questions about, gender representation, inequalities and injustices. My work is part of a Canadian SSHRC-funded research project (see also Challenging gender representation, injustice and inequality through art gallery interventions) and it is a practice of intentionality, ' intentionally bringing a political learning agenda to the table and reaching toward the kinds of political action and learning that are necessary', ( English & Irving, 2015, p. 3) for 'wokeness', justice, transformation and change.

Art galleries and museums are seen by many as trusted, authoritative and influential places and the ArtActivistBarbie project researches the potential of these places as spaces for action to educate for social justice and promote change. Hall, Evans and Nixon (2013) and Cramer and Witcomb (2018) state that museum and art gallery representations shape our identity - who we were, who we are and who we should be. The feminist, activist use of Barbie dolls in these spaces may be viewed as a form of 'culture jamming' (DeLaure, Fink and Deary, 2017) which can give agency through creative subversion and give voice via a form of radical ventriloquism. It is a site-specific pedagogical approach which can turn passive museum and gallery spaces into transformational arenas.

Sarah Williamson, University of Huddersfield

Huddersfield Centre for Research in Education and Society

To read more about ArtActivistBarbie click here.

Follow ArtActivistBarbie on Twitter.

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As a feminist, qualitative researcher and activist, I address ' enduring and emergent questions of gendered social justice', ( Olesen, 2018, p. 151) through the staging and posing of Barbie dolls in art galleries and museums to draw attention to, and ask questions about, gender representation, inequalities and injustices.

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Meet the Barbie doll staging feminist protests at museums and art galleries

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Professor Sarah Williamson of the UK uses her ‘Art Activist Barbie’ to hit out at the objectification of women, and the lack of works by women on display.

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Introducing a New Art Critic

April 23 2020
Picture: via. Twitter @Barbiereports
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

This is Art Activist Barbie, a new and increasingly influential art critic who has been causing quite a stir in the press and on social media recently. Her role is reporting predominantly on gender representation, inequalities and injustices in art galleries and museums. Her twitter profile, which has close to 13,000 followers, is filled with very eye catching and witty tableaus featuring Barbie Dolls visiting galleries with miniature placards (as pictured).

The project is run by Sarah Williamson, a senior lecturer at the School of Education and Professional Development at the University of Huddersfield. Her interesting project is detailed in full on the University's website.

As the project's page reveals;

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Blog Design and Build by Duncan Marshall and Conrad Barrett-Freeman at Chroma Design. www.chromadesign.co.uk

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Introducing a New Art Critic - Art History News - by Bendor Grosvenor

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A history of art blog covering news stories on art history matters. The blog covers news of auctions from the likes of Sotheby's, Christie's and Bonhams of old masters such as Van Dyck, Rubens, Titian, Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo, British artists such as Thomas Gainsborough, Thomas Lawrence, Joshua Reynolds, George Romney and William Hogarth, as well as modern and contemporary artists from Monet to Damien Hirst.

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The fatality of stupidity - Elizabeth Reynard

While I haven't read them for many years, this week I was reminded of the Darwin Awards - books that chronicled acts (and lives) of stupidity that, unfortunately, resulted in their premature departure from this mortal coil. As an aside, I highly recommend them as a light-hearted form of escapism for the darkly humoured reader. The event that reminded me of them? Donald Trump's unhelpful and potentially rather lethal suggestion that people could inject themselves with disinfectant in order to ward off coronavirus. The quote itself: "is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets inside the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that".

Fortunately for the American public (or those - and there were a surprising number - who thought they could try it out), the comments were met with huge backlash from the medical community as well as disinfectant suppliers. Apparently, depending on quantity and concentration of disinfectant administered, it would cause anemia, organ failure, cardiac arrest and death. While the Darwin awards have been proving that stupidity (coupled with curiosity and imagination) really can be fatal since 1985, it's refreshing to see their poster-President reminding us of this in 2020 in the midst of a global pandemic.

No, the government is not doing all it can - Oliver Shaw

The Sunday Times' damning report on the complacency and unpreparedness that has defined the UK government's approach to COVID-19 should represent a national scandal. Unfortunately, much of the media and many front pages continue to play down the severity of the crisis, talking about the easing of lockdown restrictions and confining the official death toll - which reached 16,000 on Sunday - to the small print. It's clear that the government and the prime minister repeatedly ignored scientists' warnings about coronavirus in January and February and failed to implement necessary testing when it mattered. Johnson missed five emergency Cobra meetings and vanished to a country retreat for twelve days in February, at the same time as major UK flooding. The report also reveals that 'herd immunity' was the government strategy from as early as January and that low PPE stocks were the product of years of NHS cuts.

Downing Street and government insiders have expressed anger and exasperation at the lack of urgency and seriousness in Johnson's approach and, despite ministers' insistence that all is in hand, their claims do not match up with what is being reported from the NHS and social care frontline, where staff risk their lives without, in many cases, basic protection. We should never be content that a government is doing 'all it can'. Demanding better of our politicians is essential in a democracy, especially when it's clear that a lack of leadership and responsibility might have cost thousands of lives.

Empty shelters are not something to celebrate - Molly Archer-Zeff

Facebook has been littered with posts of animal shelters proudly displaying empty cages that were full only a few weeks ago. In normal circumstances, this would be a heart-warming achievement, however, in the current climate we should refrain from celebrating. Like Christmas time, many people are rushing into adopting animals with little thought of the future. While the family is at home with seemingly endless time a new pet can seem like an exciting and charitable way to sweep away the lockdown blues. However, our current way of life does not reflect the past or future and some adoptees will find their new pet a burden when we return to normal life.

Further, Dr Samantha Gaines, an expert at the RSPCA explains that getting a dog from a trustworthy seller is unlikely at this time. With orders to stay at home and to only go out when necessary, many rehoming charities have stopped adoptions for the time being with respectable private breeders taking similar actions. Thus, a majority of the available sellers will be irreputable and unreliable. Shelters such as Battersea Dogs Home and the RSPCA are appealing to potential buyers to consider the long term before irrationally buying a pet. If this is ignored, we may soon see social media posts of animal shelters once again full.

Barbie takes on sexism in the art world - Margot Harvey

Try to recall an artist who has achieved household name status. Try to recall ten. How many of those who spring to mind are not white men? One young lady has taken on the sexism which underpins the art world over the last few years, gaining national attention.

With the motto 'small signs, big questions, fabulous wardrobe', 'Art Activist Barbie' spends her days calling out injustice, sat beside 'iconic' works with bitesize bits of feminist wisdom. Greatest hits include calling The Ashmolean's portrait of Proserpine a 'pre-Raphaelite wet T-shirt competition' and drawing attention to the fact the National Gallery in London holds 2,300 works by men and an astounding 21 by women.

The woman behind the protests is Sarah Williamson, senior lecturer at the University of Huddersfield. What started out as a way to engage her students in just how problematic the treatment of women in art is, subsequently caught on far more widely. Barbie, in an effort at poetic justice, is getting her own back. You can find her here.

Williamson's work is reminiscent of the work of Guerrilla Girls, a 1980s group of feminist artists active in New York City. They highlighted explicit and implicit gender and racial bias in the art world, often by conducting 'reviews' of specific galleries and museums and holding them to account. One iconic piece read 'Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum? Less than 4% of the artists in the Met are women but 76% of the nudes are female.' Only time will tell if these methods, jointly humorous and hard hitting, will find success in encouraging equality in the art world.

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The fatality of stupidity - Elizabeth Reynard While I haven't read them for many years, this week I was reminded of the Darwin Awards - books that chronicled acts (and lives) of stupidity that, unfortunately, resulted in their premature departure from this mortal coil.

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ArtActivistBarbie: Η φεμινίστρια που φέρνει την ισότητα των φύλων στην Τέχνη - mononews

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Όμορφη, ξανθιά, χαριτωμένη και σύμβολο της γυναικείας καταπίεσης, η Barbie τώρα μάχεται για την ισότητα στους διαδρόμους των μεγαλύτερων μουσείων και γκαλερί. Φαίνεται παράξενο, όμως είναι πέρα για πέρα αληθινό. Με σλόγκαν Refuse to be the muse (Αρνήσου να γίνεις η μούσα), η ArtActivistBarbie (AAB)…

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Mary Wollstonecraft has just been immortalised in in London but the same cannot be said for many other trailblazing women throughout history. Men make up the overwhelming majority of the statues in Britain's streets and public squares, while women remain few and far between.

The new statue of Wollstonecraft, a writer who has been christened the 'mother of feminism', is set to be officially unveiled in Newington Green, on the border between Hackney and Islington, on Tuesday night.

Designed by sculptor Maggi Hambling and installed after a decade-long campaign, it shines a light on the question of why there are so few public memorials to women.

In 2018, the BBC calculated that 174 of 828 statues recorded by the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association were female - roughly one in five. And only 80 were named after women, in comparison to 422 of the male statues.

Bee Rowlett, who has chaired the campaign for Wollstonecraft's statue for six years, told The Independent that Black Lives Matter protests, which saw demonstrators topple a statue of 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol, have changed the way statues are viewed.

Ms Rowlett, who has written a book about Wollstonecraft, said: "It changed the way people viewed statues and that is a good thing. It made us question who gets to be celebrated and who gets to live forever. There is currently a lack of statues of women which isn't good."

She noted Wollstonecraft was "actively annihilated in the press and the public mind" after she died - noting the feminist writer was subjected to "horrendous public ridicule".

Ms Rowlett added: "She was explicitly trolled for not months but years in the public domain. Her legacy became toxic for best part of a century. That is why she is not more famous."

Hitting back at criticism directed at the artwork for its nudity, she emphasised the fact that the statue was not intended to depict the feminist author and was an abstract work.

She said: "The mistake that people have made today is to confuse this artwork with a statue of Mary Wollenstonecraft. But it is not a statue of Mary Wollstonecraft. It is a sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft. It is a celebration of her ideas. That is why it is abstract. That is why it is an everywoman figure."

A statue of suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett was unveiled in Parliament Square in central London to commemorate 100 years of women's suffrage back in 2018. The piece of artwork was the first ever female monument to be erected in Parliament Square - with Gillian Wearing being the first female sculptor to have shown their work there.

Sam Smethers, chief executive of leading gender equality charity, the Fawcett Society, told The Independent "honouring" Wollstonecraft was "long overdue".

She added: "It has taken a team of volunteers to make this happen. We need many more statues of women all over the UK."

While Sarah Williamson, a senior lecturer at the University of Huddersfield who created a project called Art Activist Barbie to challenge women's representation in the art world, told The Independent it was "disappointing to see yet another female nude statue be added to all the other female nude statues in London".

She added: "And there are certainly plenty - you can hardly move for nude and semi-nude females languorously draping themselves all over the capital. On plinths, on buildings, in squares, roads and public places. What message does it send when we add to that in 2020? It's even more disappointing when the statue is to commemorate the great Mary Wollstonecraft.

"I can't think of many 'great men' who have been commemorated by a male nude statue in such a way. No, the males are nearly always fully dressed from head to toe. And sometimes they are literally in 'fancy dress' to emphasise their power and prestige - cast as mythological leaders, Roman emperors, gladiators etc. I can't help but wish that Mary, regarded as the founder of feminism, had been commemorated differently - you know, by a statue with some clothes on."

Jacqui Hunt, of Equality Now, noted statues and monuments mirror a society's values by commemorating those who are thought to be "culturally or historically significant".

She added: "The majority of statues currently are not reflective of an inclusive country of diverse heritage and contribution. Throughout history, women, people of colour, and other disadvantaged minorities have routinely been overlooked and their contributions to society ignored, downgraded or otherwise marginalised.

"It is important to have statues that celebrate women and normalise their achievements in a public manner so that representations of women in positions of power are displayed for all to see and acknowledge and for girls to know that they can be anything they aspire to be.

"However, a statue cannot be merely a tokenistic gesture or hollow substitute for tangible advancements in gender equality. This includes recognising women's abilities and achievements alongside true equality in areas such as career progression, equal pay, shared childcare and other forms of support so that all women and girls can reach their full potential."

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Why aren't there enough statues of women?

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Mary Wollstonecraft has just been immortalised in in London but the same cannot be said for many other trailblazing women throughout history. Men make up the overwhelming majority of the statues in Britain's streets and public squares, while women remain few and far between.

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Un Donatello restaurato tornerà a Fabriano | Torna il sorriso alla "Contessa di Chinchón" di Goya | Dopo la Brexit quali prospettive per il mercato inglese? | La giornata in 12 notizie
Il San Pietro Martire di Donatello. Foto: Ansa
Ritorna a Fabriano una scultura di Donatello dopo il restauro. Una statua raffigurante san Pietro Martire, attribuita quattro anni fa a Donatello, è stata restaurata e da gennaio verrà ricollocata presso la Pinacoteca civica Bruno Molajoli di Fabriano (An), recentemente riallestita. [ Ansa]

Il Prado restituisce il sorriso alla "Contessa di Chinchón" di Goya. Il Museo del Prado approfitta della chiusura di una parte delle sue sale per terminare il restauro di uno dei grandi ritratti di Francisco Goya, quello di Maria Teresa de Borbón y Vallabriga, contessa di Chinchón, opera realizzata nel 1800. [ El País]

Nell'imminenza della ratifica della Brexit, quali prospettive per il mercato dell'arte inglese? Il mondo del mercato dell'arte britannico, confuso e rassegnato, guarda l'orizzonte dopo l'abbandono dell'Unione Europea. I mercanti, gli spedizionieri e i banditori d'asta temono l'impatto che il loro business subirà dalla situazione attuale. [ The Art Newspaper] Una tela seicentesca rubata è tornata alla Diocesi di Lucca. È stato riconsegnato alla Diocesi di Lucca dai Carabinieri del Nucleo per la Tutela del Patrimonio culturale di Bologna un dipinto di Giovanni Domenico Ferrucci (1619-dopo il 1669) trafugato illecitamente oltre quarant'anni fa. L'opera, che raffigura una "Madonna con Bambino e i Santi Crispino e Crispiniano", era stata rubata dalla chiesa di Sant'Anastasio a Lucca nel periodo successivo al 1977. [ Ansa]

Una Barbie inglese femminista contro i nudi femminili. Aab (ArtActivistBarbie, alias Sarah Williamson, ricercatrice universitaria britannica) ha installato al Trafford Centre di Manchester, un centro commerciale che espone un centinaio di statue di donne nude per abbellire le proprie corsie, una Barbie ironica che espone un cartello con la scritta " Guardate cosa siete abituati ad accettare come normale". Nella stessa pagina, un commento di Salvatore Settis. [ La Stampa]

Trenta nuove assunzioni al Muse di Trento. Nel capoluogo trentino il Museo delle scienze (Muse) amplia l'organico a tempo pieno, con lo scopo di gestire parte dei servizi di mediazione, orientamento e animazione dei visitatori e delle attività connesse, ultimamente svolti da personale esterno, all'interno della struttura. [ AgCult]

Notre-Dame a Parigi riapre (non al pubblico, a otto musicisti) per il Concerto di Natale. Otto fortunati musicisti, orchestrali membri della Corale di Notre-Dame di Parigi, hanno ritrovato la loro cattedrale, in occasione di un concerto di Natale che sarà diffuso dall'emittente France 2 la sera del 24 dicembre. [ franceinter.fr]

Emilio Isgrò fa rivivere la "Natività" di Caravaggio. La "Natività" di Caravaggio (l'opera rubata nella notte tra il 17 e il 18 ottobre 1969 nell'oratorio di San Lorenzo a Palermo) torna a rivivere, sia pure virtualmente. Il 24 dicembre a mezzanotte si inaugura, in streaming sul canale youtube, all'Oratorio di San Lorenzo di Palermo, la "Natività cancellata" di Emilio Isgrò creata per Next, un'iniziativa degli Amici dei Musei Siciliani che ha coinvolto alcuni artisti contemporanei. [ Ansa]

Com'è andato il mercato dell'arte nel 2020? I fatturati delle case d'asta nell'anno che sta per terminare sono diminuiti, ma i prezzi hanno tenuto. La crisi non ha frenato le tendenze speculative in certi settori, nonostante che la scorsa primavera fosse stato dato un "allarme rosso" che dava un terzo delle gallerie d'arte sul punto di sparire. [ Le Monde]

Il Premio Nacional de Arquitectura a Alberto Campo Baeza. Il Premio Nacional de Arquitectura 2020, promosso dal Ministero dei Trasporti spagnolo e consistente in una somma di 60mila euro, è stato assegnato all'architetto spagnolo Alberto Campo Baeza. [ El País]

Daverio ripercorre la storia dell'arte con il Corriere. Martedì 29 e mercoledì 30 saranno in edicola gratuitamente con il "Corriere della Sera" i primi due volumi della collana "Philippe Daverio racconta", una raccolta di 50 piccole monografie dedicate ai grandi maestri della storia dell'arte. [ Corriere della Sera]

Addii

La scomparsa di Giovanni Romano. È morto a Torino il 24 dicembre, all'età di 81 anni, lo storico dell'arte Giovanni Romano. Iniziò la sua carriera nel 1970 a Torino come dirigente presso la Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici e Storici del Piemonte. Dal 1987 fu professore ordinario di Storia dell'arte insegnando fino al 1990 prima Storia della Critica d'Arte, poi Storia dell'Arte medioevale, fino al 1997, e successivamente Storia dell'Arte moderna. [Il Giornale dell'Arte]

Il ritratto della Contessa di Chinchón di Goya. Foto tratta da Wikipedia

Il Giornale dell'Arte di gennaio

Il nuovo numero in edicola: 112 pagine!

Giorno per giorno nell'arte | 30 dicembre 2021

Teresa Mavica lascia la direzione della GES-2 House of Culture a Mosca, a meno di un mese dall'inaugurazione | Il sistema dell'arte si espande negli Emirati Arabi | L'uso dei funghi prolifera nell'arte contemporanea | I quattro siti archeologici più importanti scoperti nella provincia cinese di Zhejiang | La giornata in 9 notizie

I protagonisti dell'anno secondo Il Giornale dell'Arte

La persona, il museo, la mostra e il libro del 2021 scelti dalla redazione

Giorno per giorno nell'arte | 29 dicembre 2021

Eataly a Verona: sarà un museo, con spazi per artisti e gallerie | La Friends of the National Libraries ha raccolto 15 milioni di sterline per la Collezione Law | Gordon Gallery, nuova sede a Gerusalemme | Prime cancellazioni: rinviate le fiere di Bergamo | La giornata in 9 notizie

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arte architettura mostre mostra eventi notizie notizia restauro archeologia documenti aste fotografia libri opinioni

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Giorno per giorno nell'arte | 24 dicembre 2020

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Il San Pietro Martire di Donatello. Foto: Ansa Ritorna a Fabriano una scultura di Donatello dopo il restauro. Una statua raffigurante san Pietro Martire, attribuita quattro anni fa a Donatello, è stata restaurata e da gennaio verrà ricollocata presso la Pinacoteca civica Bruno Molajoli di Fabriano (An), recentemente riallestita.

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Art Activist Barbie has been showing up in museums and galleries for over three years, criticizing the male-dominated art world. Holding a lollipop stick, Art Activist Barbie uses small signs to ask big questions in fabulous outfits. That is actually her mantra. But who is she and how did this initiative begin? How did Barbie, a symbol of stereotypical beauty and capitalism, become a feminist and activist?
Who is Art Activist Barbie?

The person behind her is Sarah Williamson, a senior lecturer in education and professional development at the University of Huddersfield, in the UK. A few years ago, Williamson was trying to come up with ideas to engage her students with social justice matters. Specifically, she wanted to address the troublesome way in which women have been represented in art.

So, in 2018 she came up with the idea. She took a bunch of students to the local art gallery and gave each of them a Barbie doll. Their task was to intervene in the gallery by posing their doll with commentary on a placard. The feedback was very positive. Thus, Williamson realized she found the perfect way to engage people in gender politics. And so, Art Activist Barbie was born.

But Why Barbie?

Barbie has been long criticized for her non-realistic looks. She is a symbol of unattainable western beauty standards that women are expected to fulfill; another means of female oppression. It was exactly this controversy that Williamson wanted to exploit. So, she reinvented Barbie: from a plastic bimbo, she became a feminist activist. Williamson uses the doll's popularity to draw attention to gender inequality in art galleries and institutions.

Art Activist Barbie's outfits are also an important part of her cause. She wears handmade clothes from the 1970s that Williamson's mother created. Nowadays, her older sister sews them. The concept is that one can be both stylish and a feminist. It reminds me of what Roxane Gay stated in her book Bad Feminist. Besides, one of the things that feminism stands for is self-determination. It shakes off conscious and unconscious patriarchal beliefs in all shapes and forms. In this case, one should be free to dress however they want without being excluded from a group or a cause because of it.

Thus Barbie puts on her couture and takes on the art world. All the dolls are curated in such a way to reverberate the artworks. Sometimes they do so in a mocking way. Other times, they celebrate positive female representation. Barbie became a thinker, a woman that stands for feminism.

Art Activist Barbie in Art Galleries and Museums

In the 1970s, Linda Nochlin wrote her famous essay Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists. According to some, it is the first major work of feminist history. The essay explains the reasons why female artists of the past couldn't work or gain recognition in their profession due to the lack of art history education. Then, in the 1980s, the Guerilla Girls used clever short messages on huge billboards to highlight white, male, and Eurocentric art history.

Yet decades later, the problem still persists. Galleries and museums are supposed to be neutral. They are not the typical place for political or social protest. However, Art Activist Barbie has proved the exact opposite. Through her Twitter account, BarbieReports, she visits galleries and museums and points out that they are everything but neutral. Their displays are full of works commissioned, produced, and collected by men. Therefore, they represent centuries of male power.

Female Representation

Artworks depict women from a male gaze, objectified. As Williamson states:

"Silently beautiful muses with no name...bathing or charmingly engaged in the joys of domestic, reading, and sewing [...] fashionable and beautiful trophies of society and marriage and examples of motherhood."
Sarah Williamson, Meet ArtActivistBarbie, the fearless funny feminist taking on a white male art world, The Conversation, 2020.

However, the false representation of women is not the only issue. There is gigantic gender inequality in the art world. For example, black people are shown (if they are shown) mostly as slaves and in humiliating depictions. Let's not even talk about the representation of black artists in galleries. That's dismal. The thing is that museums and galleries, especially those with historical collections, show a male-dominated view of the world. That is, artworks that are considered historically the most important, are also the ones that present the male perspective.

Art Activist Barbie acknowledges the influential role that these places have in the shaping of a society's identity. So, she tries to make them have more balance "by reflecting the lives and experience of women, ethnic minorities, and other under-represented groups". Nevertheless, she doesn't miss a chance to pay her respects or show her enthusiasm when she finally comes across a female artist.

The Reactions

The overall reactions to Art Activist Barbie are positive and encouraging. Many spot her in a crowded room and take photos. Viewers are delighted by the feminist messages, and the discussion of gender issues not only in art, but in society in general. Complete strangers start talking to each other about the artworks. However, there are also those who are shocked by the placards. As for the staff, sometimes the observe approvingly, sometimes they call security.

The art world has interesting reactions too. In 2019, the National Gallery in London promised to change its perspective. In May, they created the initiative Curator: Missing Narratives of Women. They also asked Art Activist Barbie to guest curate an exhibition in North England. In April 2019, Waldemar Januszak apologized for not showing enough women artists in his Sunday Times History of Art.

"The voices are growing and big institutions are realizing they can no longer blame history, It's time to redress the balance. Stylishly, of course."
Sarah Williamson, Meet ArtActivistBarbie, the fearless funny feminist taking on a white male art world, The Conversation, 2020.

Art Activist Barbie During COVID

Nowadays, Art Activist Barbie stays inside due to the lockdown measures. However, she continues her work online: she shares archives, re-contextualizes herself in alternative settings. Moreover, she celebrates other forgotten leading women, such as geologist Mary Annings. She also comments on relevant news. For example, she congratulated Kamala Harris for her election as the new American Vice-President.

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Art Activist Barbie, When Playful Protests Indicate Gender Inequality in Art

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Art Activist Barbie has been showing up in museums and galleries for over three years, criticizing the male-dominated art world. Holding a lollipop stick, Art Activist Barbie uses small signs to ask big questions in fabulous outfits. That is actually her mantra. But who is she and how did this initiative begin?

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As a feminist, qualitative researcher and activist, I address ' enduring and emergent questions of gendered social justice', ( Olesen, 2018, p. 151) through the staging and posing of Barbie dolls in art galleries and museums to draw attention to, and ask questions about, gender representation, inequalities and injustices. My work is part of a Canadian SSHRC-funded research project (see also Challenging gender representation, injustice and inequality through art gallery interventions) and it is a practice of intentionality, ' intentionally bringing a political learning agenda to the table and reaching toward the kinds of political action and learning that are necessary', ( English & Irving, 2015, p. 3) for 'wokeness', justice, transformation and change.

Art galleries and museums are seen by many as trusted, authoritative and influential places and the ArtActivistBarbie project researches the potential of these places as spaces for action to educate for social justice and promote change. Hall, Evans and Nixon (2013) and Cramer and Witcomb (2018) state that museum and art gallery representations shape our identity - who we were, who we are and who we should be. The feminist, activist use of Barbie dolls in these spaces may be viewed as a form of 'culture jamming' (DeLaure, Fink and Deary, 2017) which can give agency through creative subversion and give voice via a form of radical ventriloquism. It is a site-specific pedagogical approach which can turn passive museum and gallery spaces into transformational arenas.

Staging Barbie dolls in art galleries and museums is an aesthetic and imaginative provocation, a public and performative critical practice that intervenes and disrupts representation.

' We must take our work public' exhorts feminist scholar Olesen (2018, p. 163), while Denzin and Lincoln (2018, p. 103) say that as qualitative researchers 'w e must learn how to act' as 'getting mad is no longer enough'. In addition, feminist scholar and curator Ashton (2017, p.47) states there is a ' heightened need' not only for publications and exhibitions, but also ' practice-based work to demonstrate possibilities'. The feminist, activist work of ArtActivistBarbie responds to these calls to arms with performative work which seeks to activate critical feminist consciousness and an 'oppositional gaze' ( hooks, 2010). ' Playfulness has an unexpected quality ... perhaps because its essence is the combination of ideas that no one expected were combinable' suggest Puwar and Sharma (2012, p. 44), and Barbie combines aesthetic playfulness with serious messages.

It can take courage and nerve on my part when she holds a mirror up (sometimes literally and sometimes using miniature placards made with lollypop sticks!) to cultural institutions, making comments and questioning them about visibly obvious and not-so-visibly-obvious patriarchal history, visuals and narratives.

I have developed a highly successful online social media presence on Twitter (see @BarbieReports), and am starting to consider the ' potential of cyberspace to intervene for social justice ' (Olesen 2018, p. 163). One tweet shows ArtActivistBarbie at the National Gallery in London pointing out with a placard that there are 2300 works of art by men, and 21 by women. This tweet has reached over 94,000 twitter accounts in only 4 months, with over 10,000 people having engaged or interacted with the tweet in some way.

This has been a really surprising and yet exciting development of the work, and ArtActivistBarbie has been invited to present this at The Courtauld Institute of Art's festival of art history research in London on 26th April 2019. In a further development, the National Gallery published a short online video during March 2019 in which they address the gender gap in art history and the gallery. In the video, the Director of Collections says the invisibility of women in the gallery had been of increasing concern to them and they were also responding to comments on social media.

Further sites for research will be a photographic exhibition of ArtActivistBarbie's work at Manchester Central Library during July and August 2019, and this will include 2 participatory workshops open to the public to coincide with an online INTERNATIONAL ArtActivistBarbie FLASHMOB day to be held on Saturday 3rd August 2019. So, dig out your (old or new) Barbie dolls and get ready to go into any gallery or museum anywhere in the world to ask a question, make a comment or an observation about a societal issue of gender, race, class, power or privilege. Get ready to stage your own mini-activism! (details will be on Twitter).

ArtActivistBarbie has developed through the continued development of my arts-based pedagogy and research in art galleries and museums (see 'research methodology, a creative practice, and a performative pedagogy' Williamson and Clover 2018, Clover and Williamson 2018, Clover and Williamson 2019) and playful object-based learning in higher education (see Exploration: Cabinets of Curiosities-Playing with Artefacts in Professional Teacher Education). The research is a form of 'a/r/tographic' inquiry, where the three roles of a(artist) and r(researcher) and t(teacher) coexist and combine as a (Irwin 2012, p.198).The arts and aesthetic experience have the potential to 'awaken us from our stock responses' (Eisner 1995, p.2) and for Greene (1995, p.3), they can be connected to 'becoming wide-awake to the world' providing 'new perspectives on the lived world'. In her well-known phrase, they can 'release the imagination', offering new lenses through which new perspectives, new vistas and new connections might be made, and encounters with the world might 'become newly informed' (p.18).

Can the texts of scholarly arts-based research ' ever be educational in a profound sense?' ask Barone and Eisner (2012, p. 70). Can university pedagogy, research and scholarship reach out beyond universities to penetrate, or at least touch, the public sphere, encouraging new or enhanced understandings of, or at least 'a deeper curiosity toward', social, political and educational issues?

Resonating with hooks (2010, p. 170) encouragement to use not only intellect, but also our ' imaginations to forge new and liberatory ways of knowing, thinking and bring, to work for change', it seems that ArtActivistBarbie may have found an imaginative way to do this through arts-based activism.

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Art activist Barbie - University of Huddersfield

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As a feminist, qualitative researcher and activist, I address ' enduring and emergent questions of gendered social justice', ( Olesen, 2018, p. 151) through the staging and posing of Barbie dolls in art galleries and museums to draw attention to, and ask questions about, gender representation, inequalities and injustices.

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'Keep your fuckin' mouth shut'

I was shocked when several friends expressed concern for my safety when I launched this website. Yes, I've been writing about white supremacy, racism, patriarchy, toxic masculinity and other topics that tend to rile. But it never occurred to me that I should "be careful, not include identifying info on the site, maybe reconsider...." I live in small-town Ontario (Kingston) not in Brunswick, Georgia FFS. It's true that my particular editorial bent triggers intense animosity in some quarters. But I live by a journalistic ethos, which embraces different viewpoints, criticism, the cut and thrust. When writing editorials for the Kingston Whig-Standard decades ago, I was occasionally attacked for my views in a letter to the editor. One that really got to me branded me "a feminista who thinks all men are rapists." Ouch! A bit of a leap I thought!

Continue Reading

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Staring down the male gaze - Defund the Patriarchy

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One of my worst memories of high school is the daily hallway scene outside the cafeteria. After lunch, hordes of boys lined up along the lockers on either side of the hall and shout a barrage of cruel and sexist taunts at girls passing through.

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Art Activist Barbie known for reporting on and calling out sexism in museums and galleries and the lack of female artists in collections-the National Gallery, London has 2,300 works by men and only 21 by women. A UK project by Sarah Williamson #womensart

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Art Activist Barbie known for reporting on and calling out sexism in museums and galleries and the lack of female artists in collections-the National Gallery, London has 2,300 works by men and only 21 by women. A UK project by Sarah Williamson #womensart https://t.co/NTTx8sUr5R

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Art Activist Barbie known for reporting on and calling out sexism in museums and galleries and the lack of female artists in collections-the National Gallery, London has 2,300 works by men and only 21 by women. A UK project by Sarah Williamson #womensart pic.twitter.com/NTTx8sUr5R
— #WOMENSART (@womensart1) July 25, 2020

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Art Activist Barbie known for reporting on and calling out sexism in museums and galleries and the lack of female artists in collections-the National Gallery, London has 2,300 works by men and only 21 by women. A UK project by Sarah Williamson #womensart https://t.co/NTTx8sUr5R

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
Art Activist Barbie known for reporting on and calling out sexism in museums and galleries and the lack of female artists in collections-the National Gallery, London has 2,300 works by men and only 21 by women. A UK project by Sarah Williamson #womensart https://t.co/NTTx8sUr5R

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Art Activist Barbie known for reporting on and calling out sexism in museums and galleries and the lack of female artists in collections-the National Gallery, London has 2,300 works by men and only 21 by women. A UK project by Sarah Williamson #womensart

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LIBERTALIA & 'LIBERTY GUARDIAN' ARTACTIVISTBARBIE, showcased the creative and disruptive force of feminist activist 'ArtActivistBarbie', creation of HudCRES academic and researcher Sarah. The exhibition was part of activities and events commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester ( Peterloo 2019 Events, Creative reflections of the legacy of Peterloo). Linking to the anniversary themes of protest, democracy and freedom and inspired by the change sought by those at Peterloo, the exhibition invited conversation and action on gender injustice and inequality.

ArtActivistbarbie (AAB)

The ongoing ArtActivistBarbie (AAB) project is an 'a/r/tographic' enquiry, where the three roles of a(artist), r(researcher) and t(teacher) co-exist and combine as a " research methodology, a creative practice, and a performative pedagogy" ( Irwin, 2012, p.198). Responding to feminist researcher Olesen's exhortation to " take our work public" ( Olesen, 2017, p.163) , Barbie dolls are staged and posed in art galleries and museums using an aesthetic and playful pedagogic approach to draw attention to gender representation, inequality and injustice.

The potential to turn passive museum, gallery and exhibition spaces into transformational arenas which can educate for social justice is part of Sarah's continuing art activism and research.

ArtActivistBarbie has been widely featured in the press and across social media, for example: by The Guardian 'That's not art it's Victorian porn!' - how one small Barbie doll took on the art world; BBC Culture The fine line between art and pornography; and renowned US feminist publication Ms Magazine We Heart: ArtActivistBarbie Taking on Patriarchy in the Art World.

Artists can encourage and facilitate engagement in public spaces and their 'structures of power', provoking political dialogue and social change ( Ashton, 2018). This is important, because although things have improved, Pollock's question in 2007, asking which cultural organisation or corporation would embrace or " sponsor a feminist intervention which challenges the assumptions of class, race and gender that underpin the current social system" ( Pollock, 2007, p.10), remains unanswered.

The AAB project contributes to the call of Manicom and Walters for feminist adult educators to explore inventive pedagogical practices which have the potential to open up new possibilities for engagement: " pedagogies of possibility" ( Manicom and Walters, 2012, p.2).

The main part of the exhibition displayed photographs of ArtActivistBarbie 'in action': intervening, commenting, protesting and disrupting. Biesta believes critical interruptions through art can " prepare the terrain for political action" ( Biesta, 2012, p.694).

'Houses of Unrest'

ArtActivistBarbie's 'Houses of Unrest' was an installation of vintage dolls houses as part of the exhibition. Visitors were invited to be 'liberty guardians' by making miniature placards to stage their own mini-protest. More than 120 mini-placards with slogans and comments were made and positioned on the 'Houses of Unrest'. It was so popular that when the prepared cards ran out, visitors even made their own with scraps of paper and anything found to hand!

There were 38 placard statements specifically about women, equal rights, feminism, gender and trans rights.

' We are all the same inside it doesn't matter. Everyone is equal. We should be treated the same (Ava age 8)'

Another 36 placards had political messages or slogans on, eg. ' End Child Poverty' and ' Unite against racism '

Many placards on the dolls houses were political commentaries and messages about a tense and escalating political situation as the exhibition coincided with the UK government's 'Brexit' plans and heightened negotiations in the summer of 2019 to exit the European Union. The placards revealed agitation, anger and despair with the UK government; they revealed 'unrest'.

It was apparent that the participatory aspect of the exhibition had allowed visitor agency in a public space (a public library) and a forum for voice.

Engaging, inspiring, stimulating and accessible

During this exhibition a range of feedback options were available and there were around 63 feedback cards filled in. There were many short, positive comments about how engaging, inspiring, stimulating and accessible the exhibition was:

' Fantastic exhibition to stumble upon! As a young woman and also a feminist and an artist this exhibition was inspiring '

' I love it! Really grabs your attention and talks about problems and situations that need to be heard. This will also attract the attention of children and hopefully motivate them to help change the world. Will definitely be following along '

The Barbie factor

Barbie has been " a loved and troubling presence since her debut" ( Orr Vered and Maizonniaux, 2017, p.198), and Sarah has written elsewhere about how she uses Barbie subversively to captures people's attention. The character of 'ArtActivistBarbie' (AAB) explores the subversive potential of Barbie's popularity and iconic status to promote social and gender justice.

Feedback directly commented on how subversive or ironic the use of Barbie was:

' A playful thing (toy) that is perceived as a symbol for women-as-a-pretty-thing asking serious questions. A subversive Barbie. The supposed innocence of Barbie attracts attention to the issue of representation '

' Using a traditional figure of female repression by making a point using humour '

' Extremely simple effective way of challenging curation and patriarchy '

' Using a controversial figure like Barbie in an irreverent way. It's accessible to young people and children too '

Impact on knowledge, awareness, attitudes

Some comments reflected more of the impact on the audience's thinking, with details of how the exhibition had challenged them, given them a different perspective or how they had learned something new about art and gender representation.
Absolutely shocked and staggered by the stat of 2300 works by men and 21 by women in OUR NATIONAL GALLERY! Appalling. We love the idea and irony of using a Barbie to highlight gender inequality - makes the idea accessible. This will change the way we look at galleries forever. Feminism = equality for all. This exhibition was amazing and really highlights injustices in art, some I wasn't even aware of or didn't register (i.e. only 21/2300 paintings are by women, female artists are often referred to as 'wife/daughter of'). Last night I was reading through a How to Draw Portraits book and it outraged me that all the male examples were old with wrinkly, interesting faces whereas the female models were all topless, seductively posing and young. Not one undressed or seductive male pose, or a woman above 35. I go to all-girls school packed with feminists and am sending them photos of your work to them I know they'll love as well as suggesting your account. Thank you so much for this amazing work. PS: I love the subversive use of Barbie Art is mostly by the male gaze for the male gaze. Women are not posed as heroic but demure or naked. We need more women artists represented and more active female and diverse subjects. Women are subjects not objects! Agency now! Very interesting exhibition. Certainly made me think. Was stunned at the disparity between male and female works in the national gallery. Also sets you thinking how much art is out there that doesn't fit the norm expected even from old/Victorian times I don't know much about the art world but this display got me thinking about representation in art back home in the US. Thank you!
It is clear that the exhibition showcasing the critical and feminist use of Barbie fostered the development of increased critical consciousness, and what Lowry has termed the 'sociological eye' ( Lowry, 2016), in members of the public. It demonstrated the potential for exhibitions to be sites of agency, embodied enquiry, education, resistance and voice.

Barbie as feminist activist and pedagogue

You can read more about the deployment of Barbie as a feminist activist in museums and galleries in an article written by Sarah for The Conversation: Meet ArtActivistBarbie, the fearless funny feminist taking on a white male art world.

In a recently published book, Feminist Critique and the Museum: Educating for a Critical Consciousness, Sarah discusses ArtActivistBarbie as a critical public pedagogue and public intellectual, and as a feminist cyber-activist and feminist ventriloquist: The a/r/tographic re-deployment of Barbie in museums and galleries as a feminist activist and pedagogue.

Sarah is currently writing a book chapter about her research into the impact and potential of critical exhibitory practice, due to be published in 2021.

Follow ArtActivistBarbie @BarbieReports on Twitter

Story by Sarah Williamson and Kathrine Jensen, HudCRES.

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The power of creative protest to engage, inspire and educate audiences - University of Huddersfield

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LIBERTALIA & 'LIBERTY GUARDIAN' ARTACTIVISTBARBIE, showcased the creative and disruptive force of feminist activist 'ArtActivistBarbie', creation of HudCRES academic and researcher Sarah. The exhibition was part of activities and events commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester ( Peterloo 2019 Events, Creative reflections of the legacy of Peterloo).

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An activist Barbie subverts stereotypes to draw attention to gender inequality in art

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STIR speaks with British academic Sarah Williamson on her Twitter project conceptualised to bring glaring focus to the prejudice against female western artists.

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The art world, for all its beauty and thought-provoking ideas, tends to be stale, pale and male.

Despite women outnumbering men studying at art schools, a 2017 report found that just 28% of artists represented by major commercial galleries in London were women, only 22% of solo shows were by female artists and just 41% of the best-paid art academics in the UK were women. Clearly, women are still more valued when stripped for the male gaze on canvas than they are in person.

To highlight these discrepancies, an unlikely activist has been photobombing her way into galleries with thought-provoking placards.

ArtActivistBarbie is the brainchild of Sarah Williamson, senior lecturer at the University of Huddersfield. An 'iconic instrument of female oppression', Sarah has chosen Barbie in her various forms to challenge the status quo.

'Barbie is instantly recognised, she's a cultural icon with the persona of an international celebrity, and I've recreated her as a fearless feminist activist,' Sarah tells Metro.co.uk.

'I've deployed her in a subversive way - the work of ArtActivistBarbie is playful and creatively disruptive. Controversy surrounds Barbie with her impossible figure, but she is now a political force who is a positive influence rather than a symbol of female oppression! She makes comments and questions cultural institutions about their visibly obvious and not-so-visibly-obvious patriarchal history, visuals and narratives.'

Sexism in the art world is still rife. You're more likely to see a nude woman than a work by a female artist. In London's National Gallery, there are 2,300 works by men and just 21 by women. The Pompidou Centre in Paris has fewer than 10 per cent of the works by women and even fewer by non-white artists. Sarah points to a large-scale study in the United States last year that found that 87 per cent of artists in major art museums were men.

'The male bias, sexism and discrimination of the art world is reflected in wider society,' she says - a fact echoed by ArtActivistBarbie, who recently tweeted about male-centrism and male bias in medicine, saying 'there's such a lot of work to be done. Everywhere you turn. Not just art, it's the whole of society'.

Sarah goes on: 'With regard to art galleries, women are highly visible in the collections - as the subject matter, but their representation can be problematic. In many historical collections, women are portrayed as silently beautiful muses with no name, languorously sleeping or posing in various stages of undress.

'They can be found endlessly bathing or charmingly engaged in the joys of domesticity, reading and sewing. They also drift dreamily through gardens - an acceptable extension of the home for women - or dutifully kneel in prayer and contemplation.

'Women are portrayed as the fashionable and beautiful trophies of society and marriage and examples of tender motherhood, whether rich or poor. Women are portrayed as dedicated wives and daughters, or maids and servants, delicately preparing fruit or pouring water, or assisting other women with toilette.'

Other women (including 'fallen women') romantically await or grieve for male lovers, with heroines eternally being rescued by men or being portrayed as dangerous seductresses, luring men into 'danger, dangerous waters, temptation, and death'.

It's no wonder, given the number of boobs and bums on show, that historians like Mary Beard have called fine art 'soft porn for the elite'.

'When you look at some art, particularly some historical works, you should ask yourself who it has been painted for, and why,' says Sarah.

'There are so many naked females in our art galleries who have obviously been painted for the male gaze. Such works, commissioned by wealthy male patrons and painted on the pretext of a great scholarly interest in antiquity and myth, are really just the sexual objectification of women.'

Because of that, female muses tend to have less control than the all-powerful male artist...even if female muses have been brilliant artists and thinkers themselves.

ArtActivistBarbie is all about inspiring conversations about how women are portrayed and represented in art and how their invisibility as artists is reflected in wider society.

She began life as an experiment for Sarah's students.

'I'd been working in galleries and museums to engage my students with social justice issues in society and one day had the idea of using Barbie dolls,' Sarah explains.

'So, I raided my daughter's toy box, collected some more Barbies from charity shops, and gave each student a doll and miniature placard made with a lollipop stick. I took my students into our local art gallery in Huddersfield and I asked them to intervene and comment with their Barbies about gender stereotyping, exclusion and representation. Of course, this intersects with race and class too.'

The experiment was a great success - and not only in regards to the impact it had on Sarah's students.

'One visitor said to me that looking at the Barbies' placard commentaries made her "realise just how much women are judged by what's on the outside and not on the inside".'

She took photos of the experiment and found that everyone in her office - from the cleaners to the professors - were interested in what Barbie was doing in an art gallery. Today, ArtActivistBarbie is still going, challenging people to think about gender, exlusion and representation.

So what needs to change in order for gallery spaces to present a more equal world to visitors, and what role can our Barbie play in that?

'Some galleries are starting to address the gender gap and the lack of female artists in their collections, but there's a lot of work to be done. Promising steps are being taken - for example, the National Portrait Gallery in London has recently advertised for a curator whose role will be specifically to address the gender gap in their collection, the missing women.

'Obviously galleries can't just buy a lot of historical artworks by women as they simply don't exist, but they can visibly explain the societal and cultural reasons for this absence to their visitors. Not many do...'

You can check out ArtActivistBarbie's adventures and musings on Twitter.
Do you have a story to share? Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@Metro.co.uk. Share your views in the comments section below.
MORE : Netflix's Sex Education had to be rewritten after the original script failed feminism criteria

MORE : It shouldn't be left to those of us in the arts to save our industry

MORE : Wedding photographer creates hilarious shoot with daughter's Barbies after all her bookings were cancelled

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Art Activist Barbie is taking on the white male art world so you don't have to

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The art world, for all its beauty and thought-provoking ideas, tends to be stale, pale and male. Despite women outnumbering men studying at art schools, a 2017 report found that just 28% of artists represented by major commercial galleries in London were women, only 22% of solo shows were by female artists and just 41% of the best-paid art academics in the UK were women.

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At the time the Black Lives Matter campaign in the UK was drawing the national spotlight to the statues of slave traders, another activist was highlighting the way women are represented in civic statuary. "Just look at what you are being socialised to accept as normal..." says the activist's placard, focusing on a monument outside the Trafford Centre in Manchester. It shows a seated man bathing his feet surrounded by a clutch of fawning semi-naked women. Another sign beside a statue in Iowa, US - of a bronze topless woman arching her back and holding her breasts as if to deliberately enhance her cleavage - reads: "Iowa as a mother figure offering nourishment to her children? Yeah."

More like this:

- Gauguin's beautiful and 'exploitative' portraits

- How black women were whitewashed by art

- Is the Renaissance nude religious or erotic?

The placard bearer is ArtActivistBarbie, a Barbie doll posed in front of artworks and monuments, and the playful alter ego of Sarah Williamson, a senior lecturer at the University of Huddersfield. Williamson began the project as way to engage students with feminist ideas, and in particular the way women are portrayed in art. "This way, I can lead people gently into those conversations," Williamson tells BBC Culture. "It's a form of feminist ventriloquism - my voice, being spoken through a third party with AAB [ArtActivistBarbie] is the equivalent of a ventriloquist's dummy."

In a Twitter post, ArtActivistBarbie imagines the commissioning of the 1889 painting Circe by Wright Barker, which shows a topless woman surrounded by lions. "'I'd like a seductive young beauty, half undressed, confined and with some big game,' said the patron", the Twitter post reads. "'How about Circe, say with 5 or 6 tigers?'" said the artist. 'Everyone will admire your scholarly interest in Greek Mythology.'" With her tongue firmly in her cheek, ArtActivistBarbie asks if this is the depiction of a classical scene or thinly veiled Victorian porn.

The classics professor Mary Beard asked a similar question in her TV series Shock of the Nude, which aired earlier this year in the UK. The programme explored the many ways male artists have tried to justify the existence of naked women in their paintings: reclining nudes are depicted as innocently 'caught', half-bathing or somehow sleepily compromised in a state of undress.

So is what we are looking at art or pornography?

"That is a complicated question and anyone who thinks they know the answer should reflect a bit harder!" Professor Beard tells BBC Culture. "My line is that the boundary between art and pornography is always a treacherous one and the point about the past is that we have to see it both in its own terms and ours. We have to learn to look the past and its faults in the eye."
A contentious issue
For more than 100 years, feminists have drawn attention to sexist attitudes that exist within the art world. In 1914, the suffragist Mary Richardson attacked Velázquez's Rokeby Venus with an axe. The painting portrays Venus looking in the mirror, turned away from the viewer with her bottom at the centre of the canvas. Richardson claimed her protest was partly at the way men gaped at the painting, which hangs in London's National Gallery.

"Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?" shouted one billboard poster put up by feminist art activists Guerrilla Girls in the 1980s. At the time it seemed they did - less than 4% of artists in the modern art section of the museum were by women, but 76% of the nudes were female. With smart, cutting messages delivered via large-scale billboard works, the Guerilla Girls sought to name and shame the art world for its unapologetic disregard for women and other minorities in art.

In 2018, British artist Sonia Boyce took a different approach when she staged a removal, in front of an audience, of Hylas and the Nymphs by John William Waterhouse from Manchester Art Gallery. The space on the wall, where the painting depicting a clutch of semi-naked young girls luring Hylas into a lily pond had hung, was left empty for a week. "My aim was to draw attention to - and question - the ways in which museums make decisions about what visitors see, in what context and with what labelling," Boyce said after the move provoked a furious backlash with accusations of censorship, political correctness and feminist extremism. "Taking the picture down was about starting a discussion, not provoking a media storm." It did both. The issue of art and pornography is a contentious one.

"The boundaries have always been blurred," says Hans Maes, a lecturer in art history at Kent University who has written extensively on the subject. "It's generally assumed that pornography has two key characteristics: it's sexually explicit and its aim is to sexually arouse the viewer. Well, throughout history and across cultures you can find great works of art that share those very characteristics. Think of some of the mosaics in Pompeii, Kama Sutra sculptures or some of Gustav Klimt's explicit drawings. If you want, compare Goya's Naked Maja to a Playboy centrefold and tell me the line is not blurred."

In 2014, performance artist Deborah de Robertis sought to make just this point by exposing herself in front of Gustave Courbet's The Origin of the World painting in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris to reproduce the close-up image of a woman's genitals. She was subsequently arrested for posing naked in front of Manet's Olympia, also in the Musée d'Orsay. Her point was to raise the question: why is one representation of the human body defined as art and another as pornography?

In the past, censorship of explicit images was often motivated by conservative and religious values and fears of moral corruption. By contrast, feminists who challenge objectifying sexual imagery want equal rights for women, and they fear the spread of objectifying images is detrimental to that cause. At the time of Boyce's intervention in Manchester, a fourth wave of feminism was surging amid the wave of accusations against Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein and others, and there was a surge of anxiety about how to deal with art made under different ethical conditions from our own.

You don't have to look very far to find examples. Benvenuto Cellini insisted on using young virgins as models and 'deflowering' them once he had finished painting them. Eric Gill used his own daughters as models and sexually abused them. "We should perhaps distinguish between the context of appreciation and the context of creation," Maes tells BBC Culture. "If we know that an artist abused women and his abusive attitudes are also manifest in the work, then that does affect the status of the work. The work itself will come to appear seedy and morally problematic, once you become aware."

In the recent Jeffrey Epstein documentary on Netflix, one of the arresting police officers comments on the sheer volume of nudes on display in the sex offender's mansion. In a gallery, similar nudes might be objects of admiration.

"Well it does make you think," agrees Sarah Williamson. "There are many paintings in our public art galleries of young pubescent girls, which make for uncomfortable viewing. The Syrinx by Arthur Hacker on display in Manchester Art Gallery for example, shows a young girl, naked, looking vulnerable and scared and it makes me feel very uncomfortable to view it. But there's a type of reverence to these institutions with their language of Old Masters and masterpieces which we absorb unconsciously and acceptingly."
'Naked' or 'nude'?
Life drawing from nude models is still the mainstay of a fine art education and the vast majority of models are women; yet in the 'sanctity' of the life-drawing room, these women are not naked but 'nude', and they don't strip but 'disrobe'.

"But of course, the male gaze exists in the life-drawing class," says Mary Beard, who herself posed as part of her investigation in Shock of the Nude. "There are various ways culture tries to remove it and those linguistic devices are used to try to desexualise the encounter. But it's there."

"Posing virtually was something I had hoped to avoid," model Fra Beecher wrote in a blog about life modelling online during lockdown, which illustrated her own awareness of the male gaze. "I never allow photographs to be taken of myself when I am modelling. I wondered if it would be possible to reconcile my feelings regarding nude photography with my fear of appearing nude online." Another life model expressed a blunter concern: that away from the confines of the life-drawing room, participants were free to masturbate rather than draw.

Both women's concerns show how fine the line between art and pornography is and how tricky trying to negotiate it is. Mary Beard's claim in an interview that the nude is always in danger of being "soft porn for the elite" was met with abusive messages in the article comments and on Twitter. Like Boyce, she discovered that trying to start a discussion on the subject tends to inspire hostility rather than interest.

Which is why ArtActivistBarbie, subverting a plastic doll widely vilified by feminists for being a gender stereotype, was a stroke of genius on her creator's part. "The issue is discussion and starting to view things differently," says Sarah Williamson. "AAB provides a fun and playful way of doing this and, in doing so, trying to create a world in which there is more equality for women and where they are not just the subject of the male gaze."

In one of ArtActivistBarbie's most commented-on posts, she poses on the floor of a gallery in front of Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe. In the first picture, Barbie is naked like the woman in the picture and her two male companions are fully clothed. But then the set-up is reversed and Barbie appears in her glad rags while the two men are naked.

It's an interesting juxtaposition and one that certainly makes you think.
ArtActivistBarbie is on Twitter @barbiereports.
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The fine line between art and pornography

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At the time the Black Lives Matter campaign in the UK was drawing the national spotlight to the statues of slave traders, another activist was highlighting the way women are represented in civic statuary. "Just look at what you are being socialised to accept as normal..."

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La Barbie Activista de Arte no es -al menos por ahora- uno de los modelos a la venta de la muñeca más popular de la historia, sino un proyecto feminista, en redes sociales, con miles de seguidores, que reúne cientos de fotos de la glamorosa muñeca en museos y galerías, con pequeñas pancartas, en las que "cuestiona la historia patriarcal de las instituciones culturales", dijo a Télam la académica británica Sarah Williamson, creadora de este disruptivo proyecto.

"¡Eso no es arte, es porno victoriano!", "Parece un concurso de camisetas mojadas.. pre-Rafaelistas", "¡Rehúsate a ser la Musa!" son algunos de los letreros que Barbie ha empuñado, a modo de protesta, en las fotos tomadas en algunos de los museos más destacados de Inglaterra, "palacios patriarcales de la pintura", según ella misma los llama en su cuenta de Twitter @BarbieReports.

Bajo el lema "Pequeños carteles, grandes preguntas, un vestuario fabuloso", la Barbie activista de arte, vestida de gala con vestidos confeccionados a mano, lleva su mensaje feminista por diferentes espacios artísticos de Londres, para alertar sobre la desigualdad de género, a través de las fotografías que toma su creadora, Sarah Williamson, concebido inicialmente como un proyecto académico que tuvo luego repercusiones inimaginadas.

Women are all too often portrayed in #lockdown in permanent & historical art collections. Decorative objects, they are confined, enclosed, trapped in 'gilded cages'. See this thread: https://t.co/nQKIc0xYN4 pic.twitter.com/bffjXUzyUj
- ArtActivistBarbie (@BarbieReports) April 23, 2020

El aislamiento obligatorio por coronavirus no detiene a esta pequeña y perspicaz activista: además de tener guardado numeroso material de archivo para continuar publicando, la semana pasada, en el periódico británico Sunday Times, apareció un póster de la "Historia del Arte", que Barbie retwiteó en sus redes con el comentario: "¡Debería titularse Su Historia del Arte ya que presenta 66 obras de varones y 8 de mujeres! El canon del arte siempre ha sido controlado por los hombres", se lamentó.

"¿Si es paradójico elegir una muñeca Barbie para cuestionar el patriarcado en el arte? Barbie es amada y problemática. Y cuando piensas en ella te encuentras con ideas contradictorias en tu cabeza. A menudo se la considera un instrumento de opresión femenina, se la critica por ser un estereotipo de la belleza femenina y por sus proporciones irreales e imposibles. La uso por estas mismas razones, subvirtiendo esto", asegura desde Londres, en una entrevista con Télam, Sarah Williamson, profesora de la Universidad de Huddersfield.

En cada una de sus protestas Barbie luce un glamoroso atuendo -regalo que recibió de niña y siempre atesoró- y en sus excursiones a los museos -en épocas de pre cuarentena- ha conseguido improvisados asistentes entre los visitantes, para poder tomar las fotografías: "Disculpe, ¿le importaría sostener las piernas de mi muñeca Barbie?. ¡Nadie se ha negado nunca!", contó.

A menudo se considera a Barbie un instrumento de opresión femenina, se la critica por ser un estereotipo de la belleza femenina y por sus proporciones irreales e imposibles. La uso por estas mismas razones, subvirtiendo estoSarah Williamson

- Télam: ¿Cómo nació el proyecto?
- Sarah Williamson: Todo comenzó con una investigación académica para explorar el potencial de las galerías de arte y los museos para desafiar y educar para la justicia social y el cambio. Decidí plantar muñecas Barbie en galerías de arte y museos para intervenir y hacer preguntas sobre el género, los estereotipos, la exclusión y la representación. Barbie es un icono cultural con la personalidad de una celebridad internacional, y decidí que podía recrearla como una intrépida activista feminista, desplegada para ser lúdica y creativamente disruptiva. ArtActivistBarbie (AAB) es ahora una fuerza política que busca ser una influencia positiva. Hace comentarios y cuestiona a las instituciones culturales sobre su historia patriarcal visiblemente obvia y no tan obvia, sus imágenes y narraciones.

- T: Esta Barbie activista cuestiona entre otros temas la forma en que las mujeres son retratadas en el arte o la falta de artistas femeninas en las colecciones. ¿Cómo se puede revertir esta situación?
- SW: La falta de mujeres artistas en la mayoría de las colecciones históricas no se puede revertir ya que las obras de las mujeres no existen. Pero este es un punto importante: demuestra la historia de las mujeres y cómo se les ha negado y excluido del poder, el privilegio y las oportunidades de los hombres durante siglos. La historia del arte también ha sido escrita por hombres que han apartado a las mujeres artistas del camino. Sin embargo, lo que las galerías y museos pueden hacer es reconocer y explicar todo esto a sus visitantes. El mundo del arte ha sido tradicionalmente un espacio dominado por hombres y ahora se están dando cuenta de que tienen que tomar medidas para acortar la brecha de género. Pero todavía hay un largo camino por recorrer.

- T: ¿Cuál es la historia detrás de los atuendos de Barbie Activista?
- SW: El vestuario, vintage, artesanal, a medida, es parte de la imagen de AAB, basado en la percepción de la estética de glamour de Barbie y es usado deliberadamente para implicar que el interés en el "estilo" no excluye el "activismo sin miedo". Cuando era niña, en los 70, anhelaba y deseaba tener mucha ropa de Barbie para mi muñeca (de segunda mano), pero era muy cara en ese momento y no podía tenerla. Así que para mi noveno cumpleaños, mi madre me hizo un armario entero como sorpresa. Lo hizo todas las noches después de que me acostara. Siempre he guardado esta ropa, ya que sabía desde entonces que era preciosa, y una labor de amor. Cuando se me ocurrió la idea de la Barbie Activista recordé aquel armario y empecé a vestir a AAB con esa ropa porque era perfecta para la estética que quería. Además, me pareció una buena manera de honrar el trabajo de mi maravillosa madre, de 93 años.

- T: ¿Qué coincidencias encuentras entre la Barbie activista y el proyecto Guerrilla Girls?
- SW: ¡Me encanta el trabajo de las Guerrilla Girls! Ambos proyectos llaman la atención sobre los prejuicios y la discriminación masculina en el mundo del arte, y a menudo tratamos de hacerlo de una manera ingeniosa y humorística. La clave es que ambos estamos haciendo un trabajo importante para tratar de hacer del mundo un lugar mejor.

pic.twitter.com/GJjMc78mDz- ArtActivistBarbie (@BarbieReports) December 1, 2018

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Una Barbie Activista de Arte que protesta: '¡Eso no es arte, es porno victoriano!'

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La Barbie Activista de Arte no es -al menos por ahora- uno de los modelos a la venta de la muñeca más popular de la historia, sino un proyecto feminista, en redes sociales, con miles de seguidores, que reúne cientos de fotos de la glamorosa muñeca en museos y galerías, con pequeñas pancartas, en las que "cuestiona la historia patriarcal de las instituciones culturales", dijo a Télam la académica británica Sarah Williamson, creadora de este disruptivo proyecto.

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There is a powerful new feminist figure emerging in the male-dominated art world and she definitely has something to say. She goes by the name ‘Art Activist Barbie’, as Amelia Langford discovers. To see some of Barbie’s activism, check out her Twitter account @barbiereports.

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Dr. Sarah Williamson, Senior Lecturer in the School of Education and Professional Development at the University of Huddersfield ArtActivistBarbie ' account on Twitter joins Sean on the show.

Related Episodes

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Dr. Sarah Williamson, Senior Lecturer in the School of Education and Professional Development at the University of Huddersfield ArtActivistBarbie ' account on Twitter joins Sean on the show. Related Episodes

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We Heart: ArtActivistBarbie Taking on Patriarchy in the Art World

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Posing in front of mosaic tiles and Victorian paintings, sporting handmade outfits like feathered, cotton candy-colored dresses or quarantine-friendly bathrobes, a young woman exposes the misogynistic undertones of art at big-name museums like the National Gallery in London and the Getty in Los Ange…

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Meet ArtActivistBarbie, the fearless funny feminist taking on a white male art world

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Small signs, big questions and a fabulous wardrobe. How the world’s most famous doll is calling out art’s deeply entrenched male bias.

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useums and art galleries are not usually the sites of feminist political protest. Yet over the past couple of years, before the lockdown, gallery visitors all over the UK had noticed a small, determined activist whose modus operandi is "Small signs, big questions, fabulous wardrobe".

Posing in her most glamorous handmade outfits, ArtActivistBarbie has been calling into question the representation of women on gallery walls, and the lack of female artists in the country's most prestigious collections. From pointing out that the National Gallery in London has 2,300 works by men and only 21 by women to calling out what she called a "pre-Raphaelite wet T-shirt competition", the doll has important points to make about the cultural norms we take for granted.

Now that all museums and galleries are closed indefinitely, this whimsical protest which originated in the gallery space is continuing its vibrant life online: sometimes with placards on lollipop sticks (" Refuse to be the Muse! "); sometimes (wo)manning her own tiny information desk.

The woman behind the project is Sarah Williamson, a senior lecturer in education and professional development at the University of Huddersfield. A few years ago, she was trying to find a way to engage her students with social-justice issues and feminist ideas, especially the problematic way women are portrayed in art. She wondered if Barbie, that plastic idealised woman, could become a vehicle for playful commentary on the "patriarchal palaces of painting". Soon Williamson was gathering a doll army, clothing it in pieces handmade by her feminist mother in the 1970s, with new additions created by her sister. She handed each of her students a Barbie doll and a blank placard on a lollipop stick, then set them loose in Huddersfield Art Gallery.

The resulting mini-protest signs stopped visitors in their tracks, and the photographs of Barbie's protests drew plenty of notice back in Williamson's office: "I realised I had something which attracted everyone's attention and catalysed conversations about how women are portrayed and represented not only in art, but society in general."

So she set up a Twitter account, @BarbieReports, not really expecting many people to care about this decidedly academic project. "I didn't even know how to use Twitter," she confesses. "I was on the train to London and I posted it. And then my phone never stopped pinging the whole week. It just seemed to take off."

'Victorian porn'... ArtActivistBarbie in front of Charles Mengin's Sappho at Manchester Art Gallery. Photograph: Twitter @BarbieReports

With Mary Beard's Shock of the Nude having recently aired on BBC2, the authority of art galleries as neutral spaces of culture has been called into question. Beard points out that most female nudes were made for the male gaze, and lines between art and pornography are not easily drawn. Williamson agrees. As she posed ArtActivistBarbie in the Manchester Art Gallery in front of Charles Mengin's Sappho - which portrays a topless young woman with a sheer drape covering her bottom half - two men approached her. "They said to me that they were realising many of these works were, in their words, 'Victorian pornography.'"

Visitors are often shocked or amused when they see ArtActivistBarbie. Her playfulness is key to her success, helping to articulate the feminist message in a relatable way. Visitors often take pictures of her, and ask questions about the project.

Williamson remembers one visitor remarking that the Barbies made her "realise just how much women are judged by what's on the outside and not on the inside", and this awareness is at the heart of ArtActivistBarbie's mission. Art museums and galleries exude authority, and the public usually accepts the version of history and culture they portray without question.

"[ArtActivistBarbie] tries to reveal what you don't always see. She points out what is there, but what's not there as well. [She tries] to reveal inequality and structures of male power and privilege," Williamson says. "I suppose she's a catalyst - helping people to see things with a bit more consciousness ... so that people try and look with fresh eyes."

Catalyst ... ArtActivistBarbie not pleased with an all-male set of artist stamps. Photograph: BarbieReports

Williamson wants to reach out to people who wouldn't normally engage with gender politics: "There's no point preaching to the converted," she says. "You've got to reach out to everyone else." And of course, the nostalgia and familiarity of a much-loved toy can bring onlookers into a more receptive space.

ArtActivistBarbie has an eclectic range of Twitter followers, from art critics to celebrities to everyday people around the globe. Her work has also inspired others to do the same. Williamson called for a global flashmob last August, where people around the world took their dolls, placards and lollipop sticks to their local art galleries to question long-held beliefs about art and women. The posts (with the hashtag #AABFlashmob) were then projected on to the walls of Manchester Central Library, where ArtActivistBarbie was holding her first exhibition of photographs.

Now that Covid-19 has cancelled all cultural events and closed venues and spaces, ArtActivistBarbie has embraced a fully online presence. Williamson was initially doubtful that such a playful protest would be well received in these serious times. She asked her followers if the AAB project should continue - to a resounding chorus of support:
"""Please, content that isn't v*rus, I'm begging" Your activism is so positive & it gives us something else to think about" We need creative resistance more than ever"
Yet the most encouraging message came from Mary Beard. "You are just what we need in difficult times @BarbieReports".

Williamson decided to carry on, tweeting unpublished pictures from a recent London excursion and photographing Barbie and her friends in other contexts. The only disadvantage of this new normal is the lack of public engagement on the photo shoots. Often when Williamson needs to photograph a small Barbie next to a big painting she enlists an impromptu assistant. "I accost complete strangers! 'Excuse me, would you just mind holding my Barbie doll's legs?'" She laughs. "No one has ever refused!"

It seems that our social and cultural lives are going to change dramatically after we emerge from lockdown. With ArtActivistBarbie fresh in our minds, there is an opportunity to look anew at the representation of women in our galleries. Perhaps when those cultural resources reopen to the public they will tell a different story, taking on board some big questions from those tiny protest signs.

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'That's not art it's Victorian porn!' - how one small Barbie doll took on the art world

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
useums and art galleries are not usually the sites of feminist political protest. Yet over the past couple of years, before the lockdown, gallery visitors all over the UK had noticed a small, determined activist whose modus operandi is "Small signs, big questions, fabulous wardrobe".