Feminist Artists, Feminist Matrons

Abstract

Almost from its inception, Nashim has developed a secondary mission. Under the guidance of co-author Judith Margolis, Nashim’s art editor, we initiated a series of features on the work of Jewish artists (not all of them women) focusing on feminist or gendered Jewish themes. Most of these features, and our cover illustrations, address the scholarly theme of the issue in which they appear—often from a distinctive angle. The idea is not merely to bring a dash of color to the ivory tower. On a deeper level, we believe that art and scholarship—two profound modes of inquiry into the world— should speak to each other, and that art has the potential to broaden and inform the scholarly perspective, to open up new ways of looking at things, which is the premise and goal of feminist inquiry. In keeping with this general mission, we set out, for the purposes of the 2009 New Orleans conference on Jewish women’s philanthropy and of this issue of Nashim, to look at the relationships between feminist artists and their “matrons,” feminist women who support their work. In interviews with a few of the artists whose work has been featured in Nashim and with some of the matrons who have supported their work, we sought responses to these questions: Who supports feminist artists? Why do they consider this important? Where do they obtain their resources? And how is this support experienced at both ends? We define the term “matron” broadly, to include women who put resources behind artists and their work, including donors, collectors, commissioners, gallery owners, curators and institutional supporters. Perhaps more surprisingly, and somewhat more troublingly, a number of artists pointed out that the “matrons” often include the artists