TJC Gallery's Year of the Woman

A Commitment

To Women Artists

TJC Gallery's Year of the Woman is a year-long initiative championing the contributions of Southern women artists through diverse programming and exhibitions. Drawing exclusively from its own holdings, each exhibition presented at TJC Gallery in 2020 will entirely feature works created by women.

The Momentum

of a Movement

2020 marks important political and cultural milestones in the history of the United States, including the centennial of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing women's constitutional right to vote as well as the two-hundredth anniversary of Susan B. Anthony's birth. As we begin a new decade remembering the trailblazers who fought for equality at the polls, in the workplace, and beyond, a dialogue on systemic imbalance continues in the art world.

Works by women comprise only 12.6 percent of major U.S. museum collections.

Of that small percentage, only 3.3 percent are works by African American women.

Female artists represent just 2 percent of the international art market.

As recently as 2017, of the top 20 most popular exhibitions around the world, only one was headlined by a woman artist.

Since its inception, the Johnson Collection has prioritized giving works by women their due through exhibitions, programming, and scholarship. In its enthusiastic advocacy of Southern art, the collection’s aim is not to conquer and divide, but instead to pinpoint and promote, in the hope of drawing overdue attention to the significance and scope of the region’s rich cultural history.

Currently, the Johnson Collection’s holdings by women artists is double the national average; in the past two years, 75 percent of the Johnson Collection’s acquisitions have been objects by women artists.

TJC Gallery's Year of the Woman also offers opportunities for scholars. The Johnson Collection's summer graduate fellowship will emphasize research and writing on women artists in the collection, and the Directory of Southern Women Artists continues to expand in 2020.

Beyond Spartanburg, the Johnson Collection’s publication and touring exhibition Central to Their Lives: Southern Women Artists in the Johnson Collection continues to reach new audiences in its three-year, seven-state tour.

Quarterly themes at TJC Gallery provide fresh framework to consider works by Southern women artists across decades and disciplines. The collection looks forward to sharing an array of recent accessions and perennial holdings throughout 2020, and invites the whole community to a year of free, family-friendly exhibitions and events.