The Feminine Mystique: Powerful Women in the Arts

In the art world, women of influence continue to make their mark and show true "girl power"

In the past few decades, the art business has been most hospitable to women. Today, women own successful art galleries, run auction operations, publish fine art editions, head museums and, indeed, change the face of the art business.

"The art world is really open territory," said Tamar Erdberg, of Miami-based Side Roads Publications. "A lot of gallery owners are women. It's a field where women can easily be on top of the marketplace in a very short time," perhaps because, Erdberg suggested, "women bring an aspect of creativity to the function of business that gives them an upper hand."

Gallery owner Molly Barnes is a pioneering art dealer who owned a gallery on Los Angeles' famed La Cienega Gallery Row in the 1960s and discovered the artist John Baldesarri. Barnes helped build renowned art collections for producer Norman Lear and director Billy Wilder. "In the old days, women owned galleries, but it was different" said Barnes. "A husband would say, `here, take this money and open a gallery.' It was something to do with a trophy wife. All that has changed today."

Another pioneering art businesswoman is Joanne Chappell, of Editions Limited. "There weren't, when I started, many fields open to women," recalled Chappell, whose publishing company has been located in San Francisco since 1978. But the art industry, she said, "is one field where women can bring their sensitivities and tenaciousness to make a mark." On the other hand, said publisher Harriet Rinehart, "I never set out to accomplish anything specifically as a woman." And artist rep Mary Bonney noted "today there are a lot of women in the art business, and I have found it to be a friendly and open field."

So, who are some of the women who have influenced the art industry? Art Business News offers this list of Women With Impact. They've all influenced the art industry in small ways and large. The roster is by no means complete, as this is an industry where many women have, and continue to have, Impact with a capital I.

Meg Whitman, Auction House President

Perhaps nothing has influenced the art industry more of late than the Internet--and Internet auction giant eBay has helped build consumer acceptance of online art auctions. Guiding eBay's growth has been Meg Whitman, who joined the company as president and c.e.o, in March 1998. Whitman brought nearly 20 years' experience in brand building and consumer technology expertise at corporations like Hasbro, Disney, FTD and Proctor & Gamble to help guide eBay in the new e-conomy. And, of course, she was at eBay's helm when the company acquired the venerable Butterfield's auction house.

Harriet Rinehart, Fine Art Publisher

When Harriet Rinehart began publishing poster editions in 1982, she may not have realized she would help create the marketplace for "true art reproductions and not just decoration." But Rinehart knew she would depart from what was then tried and true.

"I have managed very successfully to ride the fence between high quality imagery and what is commercially viable," she said. "I envisioned the poster market as a way to promote and broaden the audience for up-and-coming contemporary decorative artists whose original art work was already selling in galleries."

She began publishing works by the artists Thomas McKnight, Doug West and Tadashi Asoma, slowly adding about 20 other artists over 18 years. "I have never been interested in time-sensitive, trendy imagery," Rinehart added. In 1999, Rinehart linked her independent boutique fine art poster publishing company with Bentley Publishing Group.

Joanne Chappell, Fine Art Publisher

In 1968, Joanne Chappell started an art business in Indiana, an area of the country "that was not quite ready for original art," as she put it. She started a retail gallery that turned into a corporate consulting firm, and at the same time she was helping Midwestern aficionados build art collections. "My personal leaning was graphic arts and works on paper," Chappell recounted, and she named her business Editions Limited--an appellation that has stuck through business reinventions and a move to San Francisco in 1978. In the late 1970s, Chappell began publishing "with a vengeance," but she's also always maintained a retail gallery. "I suspect we are one of the few poster publishers that have a gallery attached, and we still sell originals," she said.

"I've always tried to work with really good artists, and even in the beginning my posters were more higher end than most." For instance, Chappell published posters directly with artist Helen Frankenthaler. "My approach was, and is, to take real art and make posters, rather than try to hit some common denominator.

Nancy McGaw, Art Publisher & Philanthropist

Most successful entrepreneurs start with a vision and a plan. But former museum art curator Nancy McGaw and her husband, Bruce, started with a passion for a product they loved--fine art posters. More than two decades after starting up in a one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment, the McGaws, co-owners of Bruce McGaw Graphics, have created a global publishing and distribution company which does business in 63 countries, publishes a broad selection of work from more than 150 artists, distributes almost 10,000 images including those from nearly 100 publishers, and has more than 15,000 active customers.

Not insignificantly, Nancy and Bruce McGaw are responsible, in part, for the start of the open-edition poster market. Nancy said, "Our vision is to fill the world with great art at affordable prices. We start not just with the art, but with societal trends, trends in fashion, trends in home decor."

But Nancy McGaw has also impacted the art world in another way, by raising the industry's awareness of and support for the fight against AIDS-HIV through the McGaw Foundation, which she founded.

Shawn Miranda, Gallery Owner

One of the most successful gallery owners in the art industry is Shawn Miranda, president (and curator) of Miranda Galleries in Laguna Beach, Calif., and Aspen, Colo. For 20 years, Miranda has helped set the pace for contemporary art in Southern California, offering original paintings, works on paper, graphics, monotypes and sculptures by renowned artists like Orlando Agudelo-Botero, Olivia Guzman and Tuan.

Miranda founded Gallery Touche in 1980, launching Miranda Gallery in Laguna Beach in 1984 and, a decade later, her second gallery in Aspen. "I set myself apart--I've always been a renegade," said Miranda. "I've probably introduced more new artists into the market than most high-end galleries. I want to help artists make their lives better."

Laura Gold, Art Dealer

There's no use being modest, said Laura Gold: "I'm the most important woman in the vintage poster business." A dealer of period lithographic advertising posters since 1963, Gold is the author of First Ladies of the Poster: The Gold Collection, which provides a glimpse of the dawn of women's emancipation through posters.

A leader in the poster milieu, Gold was one of the founding forces in the establishment of the International Vintage Poster Dealers Association (IVPDA), which promotes, explained Gold, "excellence, professionalism and honesty" in the sector. "I've impacted this business in terms of standards of quality, and I have also helped build important collections," she said. A key example: Gold helped select the Mucha posters for the late Kimio Doi collection, now property of the Mucha Museum in Sakai City, Japan.

Mary Boone, Art Dealer

Admired (and reviled) for her endless promotion of her artists and herself (she famously owned "seven Chanel suits for seven days of the week"), New York's cutting-edge contemporary art dealer Mary Boone rose to art dealer stardom and helped create the heady art boom of the 1980s in SoHo and the world. Outspoken detractors said the works of some of her artists were "all hype, no bite," but Boone and her stable of artists have been championed for "saving" the art world from minimalism and conceptualism. She currently represents a string of contemporary artists including Richard Artschwager, Barbara Kruger, Brice Marden and Tom Sachs.

Mary-Anne Martin, Art Dealer

Mary-Anne Martin is an art dealer who re-opened the market for Latin American art after World War II, first at an auction house and later as an art dealer.

Martin staged Sotheby's first Mexican art sale--really a sub-group of about 30 paintings by artists like Diego Rivera in a larger Modern sale--in 1974. Three years later she organized the first full Mexican auction in this country. "It created something of a stir," she recounted. "People denounced Sotheby's--and me--for removing Mexican paintings from Mexico," even though many were actually consigned from U.S. collections. But the sale itself was successful, and eventually Martin and Sotheby's expanded their concept to all of Latin America. By the time crosstown rival Christie's had set up its own Latin American department in the early 1980s, Martin was ready to strike out on her own as an art dealer.

Indeed, it was Martin, in 1990, who bid a then-record $1.43 million for Frida Kahlo's "Diego y Yo," and then sold the piece to a collector (for a rumored $1.8 million).

Maryann Doe, Digital Printer

Newcomers to the art business today might not realize that there was not a printmaking technique called "giclee" a decade ago. There was no genre called "digital art." There was, however, Maryann Doe, who helped create the digital art revolution. She was introduced to an Iris inkjet printer, and a business, Harvest Productions--and then an industry--was born. "I thought because the process is slow and involved, what is the most valuable thing you could print?" Doe observed. The answer was: art work."

"From the very beginning, this whole thing was a piece of my soul," said Doe. "Some of it was a leap of faith. I was told again and again you can't do this. Don't use art paper on the IRIS. You can't make art like this. At the time we started I didn't realize we were creating a new sector. I just wanted to make wonderful reproductions, and to create a family-owned business producing art."

June Wayne, Printmaker

June Wayne is an artist, printer, feminist and social activist whose Tamarind Institute trained a generation of lithographers and established lithography as an important fine art medium in this country. Said Jean Milant, owner of Los Angeles' Cirrus Editions, "I've always felt June was the person who was responsible for the whole print publishing revolution in America."

In 1959, Wayne established the influential Tamarind Lithography Workshop and through that, along with New York printmaker Tatyana Grosman, helped foster the print boom of the 1960s and `70s. She taught artist-printers and master printers and invited contemporary artists to try their hand at lithography. Tamarind also developed the modern system of documenting and preserving prints and teaching art dealers how to properly record these prints. Within 10 years in Los Angeles, Tamarind had trained some 70 master printers and had awarded fellowships to approximately 150 artists. By 1970, Tamarind and Wayne had produced more than 2,500 editions of contemporary fine art prints by such artists as David Hockney, Edward Ruscha, Josef Albers and Richard Diebenkorn.

Kathan Brown, Printmaker

Some of the great prints of our time have been produced by Kathan Brown, whose Crown Point Press (founded in 1962) in San Francisco has kept etching and intaglio techniques a viable part of the art business. Indeed, critic Susan Tallman in her book, The Contemporary Print, described Crown Point as "the most instrumental American printshop in the revival of etching as a medium of serious art."

Crown Point has functioned both as a print workshop and publisher--Brown first published etching portfolios by Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud in 1965. Eventually, Crown Point expanded its technical options to include etching, drypoint, aquatint, woodcut and photogravure--which had all seemed doomed to obsolescence in the art industry before Brown rescued these intaglio techniques. Brown's path was not an easy one. "People told me I'd never get any artists in" to try etching, Brown said. "They said etching was too remote, too technical.... but as soon as I managed to get artists to try, they liked it."

Julie Maner, Marketing & Licensing

With her sports marketing, promotional and licensing background, Julie Maner, vice president of business affairs for Museum Editions, is opening up the art industry to new ideas from different businesses.

Maner joined the company owned by 3-D pop artist Charles Fazzino three years ago. "I came with a very strong marketing background--and a fresh perspective," she said. "I was very lucky. I walked into a situation where Charles had done a great job of creating an audience and reputation, and then I pushed the envelope. Since I've been here, I really pushed the Charles Fazzino licensing business."

Under Maner's leadership, the company now licenses the artist's images to many lines of art-related products which can "compliment," said Maner, the primary product, which of course is fine art. Still, before she arrived, she laughed, "I don't think anyone would have envisioned Charles Fazzino's artwork on lingerie," but a line was indeed launched.

Maner also builds public relations opportunities. In particular, "we've done a lot in the sports world. Charles is now an official artist of the Olympic Committee," and he is also creating the official poster image for Super Bowl XXXV, to be held next January in Tampa Bay, Fla.

P. Buckley Moss, Artist

Painter Patricia Buckley Moss is one of America's most popular female artists, and she has achieved success in spite of (or perhaps, she says, because of), a severe early learning disability. Finding the core academic studies to be difficult because of her dyslexia, Pat threw her creative energies into art, eventually receiving formal training at the prestigious Cooper Union in New York.

Moss' art grew out of this type of adversity and now often reflects a refuge from our chaotic lives. Her chosen subjects--empty winter landscapes, the simple lives of the Amish and Mennonites, family portraits and domestic scenes--step back from the hustle-and-bustle of everyday life.

Today, Moss works to help children who, like her, suffer from learning disabilities. The P. Buckley Moss Society, a collectors group of 20,000 members, selects worthy charities and helps these organizations use Moss' art to raise funds--more than $2 million to date. The P. Buckley Moss Foundation for Children's Education promotes the use of art in school curriculums to help teach the learning-disabled, sponsoring a yearly $10,000 teacher's award for the best-designed art program for students with learning difficulties, and a major annual conference on art as a teaching aid for those with learning difficulties.

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