Texts by the Department of History and Art History highlight the expertise of these women whose voices were ignored by the prevailing sexist attitudes of the day

Multilingual, well-travelled, self-taught, and above all, experts and specialists. Despite this, all too often these women were silenced and ignored, forcibly relegated to the background. These qualities and this treatment are shared by each of the twelve international art historians featured in the sixteenth edition of the URV Equality Unit’s calendar, which every year highlights the role of women in various fields of knowledge.

The texts have been written by Licia Buttà, Jorge Ángel Carbonell, Debora de Gregorio, Xènia Granero, Anna Isabel Serra, Marta Serrano, and Vanina Hofman, all from the Department of History and Art History. The authors note, for example, that in the 19th century, the social imperatives of the time forced women art historians to adopt a pseudonym or their husband’s surname in order to gain public recognition, as in the cases of Violet Paget and Anna Brownell Jameson.

Sirarpie der Narsessian and Christine Peltre, specialists in Armenian-Byzantine art and in the relationship between French colonialism and Islamic art respectively, subverted Western stereotypes. Meanwhile, Rose Valland, Fernanda Wittgens, and Margarita Nelken provide examples of political activism and civic engagement, for instance by rescuing artworks from the hands of the Nazis.

The calendar also includes women historians such as Mary Pittaluga, María Concepción García Gainza, and Marta Traba who focused their efforts on teaching and education as the means to bring about transformation. Finally, Linda Nochlin and Lucy Lippard fought to improve the conditions and participation of women art historians in social and political life at a time when such feminist activism was a direct challenge to the prevailing cultural imperatives of the time. They knew that any historical reconstructions that did not include the experiences of women would inevitably be flawed.

As with the previous fifteen editions, the calendar dedicated to women art historians can be downloaded free of charge from the Equality Unit’s website, or hard copies can be collected in person from the URV’s Catalunya Campus, the offices of the Equality Unit or the CRAI.