Celebrating the Work of Women Artists in the FAC Collection

Every year March is designated Women’s History Month by Presidential proclamation to honor women’s contributions to history. Marked annually on March 8th, International Women's Day (IWD) is one of the most important days of the year to celebrate women's achievements and raise awareness about women's equality. To commemorate, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College highlights a selection of artwork by women in the collection.

The art world is not equitable for women. In the United States, women make up more than half of the total population and nearly half of visual artists. Yet they earn less than their male counterparts. They are also significantly less likely to have their work collected by museums or represented in art historical text books. This unequal treatment can make the contributions of women artists seem invisible.

Honoring the work of women in history often involves reclaiming forgotten histories or reassessing reductive narratives. Cindy Sherman’s Madame de Pompadour (née Poisson) tea service offers an intriguing example of how art can enrich and complicate our existing ideas.

Sherman is best known for photographing herself in different guises of both imagined and historical figures. Here, she has cast herself as Madame de Pompadour and screen printed the image onto a porcelain tea set.

Madame de Pompadour was an influential member of the French court in the mid-1700s. A shrewd self-promoter in a male-dominated arena, she was born into the bourgeoisie (middle class) and later elevated to nobility through her relationship to King Louis XV. Her complicated legacy is sometimes reduced to her role as mistress to the king or her patronage of the arts.

Sherman cleverly places the portrait on the tea set to reveal Madame de Pompadour’s relationship to a porcelain factory. Pompadour frequently used gifts of porcelain to advance the diplomatic agenda of the French court. She even arranged for the French court to financially support then purchase the porcelain factory she patronized. This venture helped her maintain her position at court even after her sexual relationship with the king ended. Sherman’s tea set, created as a collaboration with Artes Magnus, takes inspiration from the pieces manufactured there for Madame de Pompadour.

Sherman layers the many narratives of Madame de Pompadour’s life: mistress, self-promoter, arts patron, commodity, and consumer. Printing this image on an object available for purchase calls attention to the famous mistress’ commodification of self. Imitating the expensive designs of the porcelain manufacturer that Madame de Pompadour promoted also implicates the woman in a system of excessive consumption that would prove ruinous for the French royalty. In Sherman’s hands, Pompadour is not reduced to her positive or negative legacies but allowed to exist in her complexity.

This is just one example of the women’s stories told in the collection of the FAC. We hope you take a moment to explore more through this selection.

Blair Huff

Curatorial Assistant

2021