Art, Money, and Cultural Power in America

Abstract

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries women donated their money, collections, and time to promote the creation and appreciation of art in America. They established female-centered networks for the production and marketing of art, supported male-dominated art institutions, and established competitive avant-garde museums. These activities have generally been considered isolated or unique by historians of American art or philanthropy. But when considered together as historical subjects, women art philanthropists cannot be dismissed as anomalous. In Women's Culture: American Philanthropy and Art, 1830-1930, Kathleen D. McCarthy gives long overdue attention to the significance of women's philanthropy in America. Although she defines art patronage in narrow and problematic terms, McCarthy admirably contextualizes and counters the myth that women have always been the nation's cultural custodians. She argues instead that initially women's role in the development of America's major art institutions, primarily museums, was restricted. Moreover, McCarthy asserts that until the twentieth century women's philanthropy was detrimental to the careers of other women in the arts, be they artists, curators, or trustees. McCarthy describes the history of women's philanthropy in the United States as a slow evolution from charity to authority (p. 244). Before the twentieth century and the rise of female individualism, she argues, women's prerogatives and aesthetic vision were prescribed by the ideology of separate spheres and the legal binds which hindered upper-class women's ability to wield their family's wealth and power. Throughout the nineteenth century women's initiatives and associations remained scaled to family and church, and were predominantly charitable, voluntary, and collective. These institutions, McCarthy asserts, never competed with the academies and museums of art being developed by wealthy men after the 1860s, the elite stratum of well-endowed, hierarchically structured, 'non-