I've been reading the comments over on Edward Winkleman's blog post about galleries and diversity, particularly regarding gender.
James and I don't really think about whether the shows we see, or the art we buy, are by women or men generally. Sometimes we realize we have written about only women for a bit on our blogs, and certainly our collection has many women in it. Our records aren't organized enough for us to tell you percentages.
When it came time to curate our first shows at Dam, Stuhltrager, we wanted to make sure we didn't have an all straight white male show. That doesn't describe the people we know and live around, so it didn't really make sense to have a group of artists like that.
I will say we struggled with the idea of thinking about diversity without choosing artists by "category," or expecting a specific person to be some kind of representative of a group. I think setting out with some kind of quota system wouldn't really have been in the spirit of the way we explore the art world and find new things.
Come to the next opening on October 13th, and check out the works. We have a title now:
Dangling Between The Real Thing And The Sign In The Window
The title is inspired by this Morton Feldman lecture.
The lists of artists is: Jaishri Abichandani, Ina Diane Archer, Peter Corrie, Susan C. Dessel, Nicolas Garait, Joy Garnett, and Jacques Louis Vidal.
Susan C. Dessel's installation will still be in the backyard sculpture garden during the run of the "Dangling" show.
looking forward to it.