Veronica Winters Painting

In this podcast episode you’ll meet with a family of two art collectors – Steven Alan Bennett and Dr. Elaine Melotti Schmidt who established The Bennett Collection of Women Realists® in 2009. They focus on collecting art of a specific art style. Their collection consists of figurative realist paintings of women by female artists.

By amplifying voices of the female artists, the art collectors hope to bring balance to the art world. Steven Bennett and Dr. Schmidt established the Bennett Prize and gifted $12 Million in art and cash to build a new wing at the Muskegon Museum of Art in Michigan dedicated to the female artists. What’s truly admirable about this couple is their will to go against the art market trends. They’re carving out their own path in art collecting that has clear purpose and social impact for generations to come.

Art to collect: gender equality

If you think that women artists are equally represented in the contemporary art market, think again. Art history is dominated by male artists with very few female artists presented in the permanent collections of art museums today. (This is in part due to the absence of education for women artists before the 20th century. Women artists of the past were educated by their artist fathers only). In the past decade, only 11% of all work acquired by the US’s top museums was by women according to the New York Times report in 2019. Women artists represent only 2% of the art market & only 13.7% of artists represented by commercial galleries in Europe & North America are women according to Repaint History website.

“Just 11 percent of all acquisitions and 14 percent of exhibitions at 26 prominent American museums over the past decade were of work by female artists. According to a joint investigation by Artnet News and In Other Words, a total of 260,470 works of art have entered the museums’ permanent collections since 2008. Only 29,247 were by women.” (Museums Claim They’re Paying More Attention to Female Artists. That’s an Illusion. Artnet, September 19, 2019). “Work by female artists born between 1930-1975 accounted for just 5.3% of the $16.7 billion in auction sales in the past five years.” (Young female artists are finally getting some art market traction- but their predecessors remain scandalously undervalued, Katya Kazakina, July5, 2022)

“Artists of color, female artists and members of the LGBTQ+ community have been historically underrepresented in the traditional art market. A white male artist will sell more works, for higher prices, in more exhibitions than his less-represented colleagues, and he will have less of a challenge obtaining gallery representation. The system is decidedly undemocratic and arbitrary and appears to be run by an elite who are, primarily, white male painters. Just one comparison out of many possible examples demonstrates the problem very well: when Jenny Saville’s Propped sold for $12.4 million in 2018, it became the most expensive piece of art by a living female artist; Jeff Koons’s Rabbit sold for $91 million. So far, so similar, in the NFT space…” (Magnus Resch, “How to create and sell NFTs-a guide for artists,” book published in 2022).

These stats are improving at the top tear of the art market only in 2022. Artsy has just published what sold at New York’s Spring 2022 Auctions, which includes sales of Anna Weyant (the protégé of Gagosian himself), Maria Berrio, Ewa Juszkiewicz, Flora Yukhnovich and more. (Read more here: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-sold-new-yorks-spring-2022-auctions)

Begin art collecting today

I hope this interview encourages you to start your art collection or at least buy a few paintings from contemporary artists you really like. You can start small and on a budget to bring art to your home that inspires you and helps living artists to continue painting. Contact artists directly, visit their studios and be open to learn about contemporary artists and their inspiration. Perhaps, one day you’ll grow your art collection to change the world for the better.

To learn more about the art collectors, their efforts and the Bennett prize, please visit their official website:https://www.thebennettartcollection.com/

To listen to the interview, find Hooked on Art podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a review if you enjoy it! It’s much appreciated. 🙂 The Hooked on Art podcast is available on Apple and Spotify.

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