WHAT WE DO

Question: What do all the women in the panel above have in common?

Answer: They’re all at least semi naked. (except for the BAHPS) ;)

Fantastic, now that we’ve diverted everyone’s attention away from the breasts, shall we talk about the elephant in the room? Did you know that there are more images of naked women in galleries worldwide than there are Female Painters?

Did you know that there are only 11 female painters in London’s National Gallery, (and half of their works are in storage), yet there are over 50 paintings whose subject matter depict rape?

How about the contemporary art market, that must be better, right? Things are changing, right? Well, did you know that In London, 78 per cent of the galleries represent more men than women, while only 5 per cent represent an equal number of male and female artists?

The Big Art Herstory Project (BAHP for short, although we’re definitely just going to call it BAHPS, as in, get your hands off my… ) was founded in London in 2018, with the simple aim of telling the other side of the story, you know, the one that ISN’T told in Art Galleries, Museums, History books or Schools. The one about WOMEN, brave, audacious, oppressed, triumphant, talented, wonderful WOMEN, and NOT just the naked ones!

We aim to spread the basic facts of Art-Herstorical-Feminism (our term, we invented it ;) ) to a wider audience. The need for this information is real and immediate, and through our events and classes we attempt to consolidate the many channels of information available into digestable, understandable chunks, because we believe that EVERYONE has a right to this information, and if it isn’t on the curriculum, we’ll just put it there ourselves!

We believe that everyone should know these incredible and often terrible stories, because when the shadow of economic downturns, ignorance and intolerance loom, women’s rights and the rights of minorities are the first rights that are eroded, and only knowledge openness, hard-work and compassion will begin to amend the skewed perspective of History, and THAT is what we’re here to do.

If you would like to read more statistics like these, the National Museum of Women in the Arts (America) offer a succinct and well designed infographic that is free to download.
Alternatively you can find a British Study here
https://www.freelandsfoundation.co.uk/documents/representation_of_female_report.pdf
and the tate offer an interesting article here
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/tate-exchange/women-in-art