The purpose of this symposium is to study the training and professionalization processes of female artists who intervened in the 19th and 20th centuries through their rise in structures of art education: from workshops and private academies to public institutions. Excluded from institutional arts education for some time, women did not have access to these positions until the beginning of the nineteenth century. One example from France is the École spéciale de dessin pour les jeunes filles (School of Drawing for Girls), the only art school for women publicly financed by the State founded in 1803 and transformed into a public institution in 1810. After a long battle, women were finally accepted to the École des beaux-arts (Beaux-Arts School) in 1897, however, only one same-sex work shop was open for them until the end of the 1920s.
This symposium is part of a wider collaboration based on the female artists from the collections of the Public Establishment of the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée de l’Orangerie, the Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou and the association AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions. It will conclude the exhibition of Berthe Morisot at the Musée d’Orsay, the first ever dedicated to this major artist since the museum opened in 1986, and the first by a national museum since 1941.
This symposium intends to bring together researchers from various horizons in order to shed light on the research conducted on the schools, academies and workshops that opened their doors to women.