Public-Facing Project Proposal

Lavinia Fontana was a pioneer for women artists in the Baroque to depend on their craft as an economically viable profession. At the time, women often needed to place their artworks behind domestic tasks. Fontana supported herself and her family with artistic talent and financial strength. Over the following centuries, we saw an increasing number of women support themselves and their families with their craft, as presented in the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection. For contemporary artists, we see economic challenges facing men and women artists alike, as a 2018 survey found that only 32% of European artists were full time. Unfortunately, there remains a gender disparity, much like the one present in Fontana’s day, as only 2% of artists earning over £50,000 per year are women, despite comprising a strong majority of the workforce. 

There are similarities between the challenges contemporary artists, especially women, face trying to earn a living off their work, and the adversity Fontana successfully overcame to profit off her artwork and provide for her family. As such, we propose a traveling gallery of her artworks alongside documents providing context of the commissions she negotiated and earned. This gallery will be advertised to raise awareness of the challenges modern female artists face and can highlight the work of local female artists in the cities it visits. We hope that the combination of local artists and Fontana’s artworks will help Fontana to be remembered for the pioneer she was while using her fame to promote women of this era.

The gallery will travel internationally, specifically to museums dedicated to hosting works by women artists. The tour will include the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.; the Women’s Art Museum of Canada in Alberta; the Glasgow Women’s Library in Glasgow, United Kingdom; the Finkelstein Gallery in Melbourne, Australia; and the Frauenmuseum in Bonn, Germany.