Fife named and shamed for zero publicly owned sculptures by women
Fife has been named and shamed in a new survey which claimed the region has no publicly owned sculpture made by women.
It was one of only three UK areas which gave a zero return.
Art shipping experts, Pack & Send, analysed almost 5000 publicly owned sculptures to find which regions gave the biggest platform to female sculptors.
In Fife, it identified 13 examples … all done by men.
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Hide AdTwo other regions, Redcar and Cleveland, and Tyne and Wear, also delivered a zero return.
The company behind the study said: “Although women have been involved in art since its inception, traditional art history has excluded or hidden their participation.
“Women’s contributions have been seen as absent, or of a lesser quality than that of their male counterparts.
“It is only with the emergence of feminism that attitudes are changing. The stereotypical depiction of women both as art subjects and as artists may be on the decline, but there is still work to be done.”
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Hide AdPack & Send assessed 4900 sculptures, and assigned a gender to 1470. Of these, 1,119 were male and 351 were female.
It added: “When we exclude nameless figures, the numbers become even worse.
“Some 892 statues were of named individuals. Of these, 764 were of men and only 128 were of women. There are nearly as many publicly-owned statues of men named John as there are of all named women!”
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Hide AdThe survey noted there was a historic gender imbalance within art, but said that women still face barriers trying to engage with the art world.