Review: How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers
Review of Hettie Judah’s How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents), 2022
Our November book club pick, Hettie Judah’s short treaty about mothers in the art world and the barriers they face. Women are now more likely to attend art schools, and equally present on the art market in their early careers. But gender inequalities get ever stronger in their 30s, an age at which women are likely to become mothers. Based on a study for Freelands on this phenomena, the book takes us through the different spheres in which artist mothers are disadvantaged, and what they’re doing about it.
First, the culture, and the longstanding belief that due to the demands of motherhood on the body and the mind, women have a choice to make: babies or art, a brood or a practice. The difficulties of affording childcare and the need for flexibility are real. The loss of self and the isolation can be common feelings. And so mothers organize, forming networks and sharing their stories to help each other and challenge their exclusion. The second chapter tackles the invisibility of students who are also parents in art schools. Parenthood challenges the untold norms of higher education to have no caring responsibilities. Judah’s interviewees report a culture that is inflexible on deadline, sometimes exclusionary, and even when support is available (childcare, lactation rooms) refuses to make parenthood visible. Here again, mothers attempt to organize
Emma Talbot: “I can’t just be this work person and this parent person, because I need something else”
Chapter three addresses a recurring theme in the books we’ve picked so far: the studio. There was Ruth Asawa making art at home - and choosing, designing a home conducive to that; anecdotes in Phillips’ book about where artists and writers work, or how Louise Bourgeois’ moving to a bigger studio shaped her later sculptures. Judah described this chapter about being less concerned about the physical aspects of the studio than the metaphorical aspect of taking time in a space of one’s own, instead of the work of caring for one’s children. Often also, for no monetary gains, which mothers are more easily forgiven to pursue. Here again, she sheds light on how mothers adapt: they make a studio at home or closer to hoome, set up collaborative studios. In short they reclaim their space and time.
Speaking of, chapter four is about residencies which offer conditions conducive to producing a new body of work. It opens with Lenka Clayton’s Artist Residency in Motherhood taking motherhood itself as a site for artistic production. She later outlines what artist residencies can do for mothers: provide space for family, childcare… Chapter five covers the relationships with commercial art galleries. This is yet another area with hours difficult to negotiate: most talks, events, are during the 6-8pm period and babies are rarely welcome or enthusiastic about being there. They are also relationships needing maintenance, and reestablishing them after the most intensive years of motherhood is a struggle.
Chapter 6 concludes the book by inviting us to think about the representations of motherhood in museums, too often limited to symbols of morality, too often set aside on account of its topic. It pleads for all actors of the art world to consider that artists may be parents and to envision an alternative to the always on, always flexible paradigm of creative work that sidelines all those who have care responsibilities.
This was certainly a provoking read, as we were trying to lower barriers for mothers to attend our events. It highlighted challenges ahead of us. While this is not discussed in the book, artists-mothers networks seem to have a difficult time lasting beyond their founding group emerging from the most intensive years of parenthood. Each generation appears to reinvent the wheel while domestic inequalities remain stagnant. How do we create lasting change?
A list of organizations supporting artist mothers discussed in the book:
Mothra (Canada, Toronto)
Art mamas (New York, online)
Mothers who make (started in the UK, with international chapters in France, Australia and online)
Interlude residency (Livingston, NY, USA)
Thrive Together network and the artist/mother podcast (online)
Fair share for women artists (Germany)
Mother House studios (UK, London)
Kunst+kind (Berlin, Germany)
Vrouwenmantel Art Research Group (Netherlands)
44point4 (Ottawa, Canada)
Cultural ReProducers (Chicaco, MA, USA)
Collective project about motherhood
