The female gaze Women artists making their world

The Female Gaze, a provocative 1989 book of radical essays (edited by L. Gamman and M. Marshment), focused on gendered viewing practices. The title reemerges in this new volume with pointed analyses of art by women, now broadened in the wake of the feminist movement. This exhibition catalogue thoroughly documents Lee Alter's gift of her collection of art by women to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Representing 150-plus artists and acquired over 30 years with the conscious intention to donate to a museum, the Alter collection includes the art of luminaries and of lesser-known stars, whose works of art are in lucid dialogue with each other. A painter herself, Alter favored paintings, but her interest in the diversity of methods and materials used by women from many different cultural backgrounds, generations, and contextual affinities is evident. Ten short essays cover a wide spectrum of topics concerning the history of women artists as collaborators, art students, advocates, political rabble-rousers, and supporters of each other and the larger visual arts arena. Included are short artist biographies with color illustrations for all the works and a useful selected bibliography. The notes at the end of the essays are also a valuable resource. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty; general readers. M. R. Vendryes independent scholar

Before the 1980s, female art collectors were extremely rare, and few collectors, regardless of gender, focused exclusively on amassing art by women. Luckily for museum-goers, visionary Philadelphia-based art collector Linda Lee Alter had little regard for such conventions as she built a collection of woman-made art specifically to bequeath it to a public institution. This catalog was created in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where Alter eventually donated her collection. The fully illustrated catalog features erudite, interesting essays by an internationally diverse group of scholars and curators who focus on Alter's collection: 500 works of art from around the world (all by women artists of the past 50 years) that are stylistically and materially diverse, including paintings, photographs, drawings, watercolors, pastels, collage, prints, fabric pieces, ceramics, bronze, wood, and sculpture in other media. VERDICT This wonderful book is an inspiration; recommended for readers interested in contemporary art, collectors, and collecting, as well as feminism.-Jennifer H. Krivickas, Univ. of Cincinnati Lib. (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.