The Female Gaze: The Story of Women in Art

Register for this Spring 2023 course on the new NYU SPS Academy of Lifelong Learning website.
For centuries, women artists have had to overcome sexist prejudice that held them back in their long and hard climb to recognition and success. The story of their trials is often brutal: women, it would appear, had to suffer in order to be able to make great art, with their personal trauma serving as the alchemical ingredient that would either plunge them into oblivion (Camille Claudel) or reward them with fame (Frida Kahlo). This course is dedicated to exceptional women who diligently pursued an artistic life, sometimes by evoking the styles of the famous male artists of their own time, sometimes by blazing out with a new style that revealed a completely original and different awareness of the world. Art critic Jenny Higgie’s book, The Mirror and the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution, and Resilience: Five Hundred Years of Women’s Self-Portraits, will accompany our study of the female gaze in art, from the Renaissance through the present. Among the artists considered are Artemisia Gentileschi, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Rosa Bonheur, Mary Cassatt, Hilma af Klint, Lenora Carrington, Niki de Saint Phalle, Alice Neel, and Jennifer Packer. Spring 2023 tuition is $719. 

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You'll Walk Away with

  • Familiarity with important artworks by famous women artists
  • Knowledge about the historical and cultural contexts that impacted women artists
  • An understanding of women’s contribution to the art world

Ideal for

  • Art enthusiasts
  • Prospective and practicing arts professionals
NO open sections available for this course at the moment. Please check back next semester.