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Throughout the twentieth century, Europeanschools of art and design have been subject to successive waves of criticism,reform and reinvention. The traditional system based on patterns of validationand career networks, as well as on a strict value scale, was rendered more orless obsolete by the artistic and social revolutions of the first avant-gardes.Having lost one of its key raisons d'être,traditional art education has since been constantly re-evaluated. Ongoing attemptshave been made to make teaching more relevant, in particular through anincreasing openness to the contemporary. The methods, techniques and evenattitudes passed on in the schools have been constantly adapted and updated,far from the putative ‘objectivity’ that had been long been promoted in theAcademies. Numerous models have been constructed and tested in Europe andaround the world, such as those of the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College,CalArts, the Ulm School, the Freie Internationale Universität, the Banff Centrefor Arts and Creativity, and La Cambre, or more recently Le Fresnoy, along withthose of various independent and ephemeral summer schools. With this turntowards the contemporary, art education has become more complex across theboard. The circulation of students, artists and more generally of forms andideas has contributed, above and beyond different national contexts, to aglobal transformation of artistic education. One aspect of this broad renewal of artisticeducation has been the gradual accession of women artists to teaching positions.While some women artists are well known for their role as educators, such asAnni Albers, Marianne Brandt, Lygia Clark, Doris Stauffer, Gina Pane, forothers – Maria Lassnig, Lea Lublin, Annette Messager – teaching remains aneglected aspect of their wider practice. The careers of these artists can reveala good deal not only about the underlying hierarchical structures of artinstitutions, but also the ways in which these institutions were progressivelytransformed over the course of the 20th century. On a moretheoretical level, the arrival of women teachers in art schools has also throwninto sharp relief the relative absence of accounts of the role of gender inteaching patterns, practical methods and perhaps even in the content of theknowledge imparted. We propose therefore to think of art education in the 20thcentury through the prism of gender in order to understand how art and designschools may have functioned as privileged sites in the struggle for visibility ofwomen artists throughout this period. The structural difficulties faced by womenartists are well known. Recent research has pointed to their marginalization, theirlack of institutional representation and market support, the determining role oftheir entourage and their links to male artists, and their confinement totechnical roles as being some of the major mechanisms at play in the lack of ordelay in the recognition of women artists. Yet little is known about their rolein art and design schools. While the field is slowly but surely becoming morefeminine, can schools be considered as another aspect of the same art institution,one more open to women and perhaps even able to afford them a greater degree ofvisibility? Teachers hold an important place in the artworld: they lead generations of young artists, and their own production benefitsfrom the emulation of the group, thus insuring a long-term visibility for theirwork different to that afforded by, for example, the market. Yet is thisgeneral observation equally relevant for women artists? What place is reservedfor them in art schools? Is the social recognition associated with teachingfunctions the same for female artists as it is for male artists? How can this questionbe broached beyond a simple gender binary? Questions surrounding the choice,accessibility and valorisation of teaching as a career merit further discussion.Unpaid work and general job insecurity, phenomena that disproportionatelyaffect women, might be reconsidered as places from which women have been ableto exert an influence from a disadvantaged position – an influence which,although discreet and outside of institutional hierarchies, has been no lessreal. Taking into account artist educators’ teachingmethods and content also makes it possible to reveal how gender expectationsare circumvented or perpetuated in the process of transmission from onegeneration to the next. The mechanisms of care, self-sacrifice and attention toothers often associated with teaching also resonate with clichés of thefeminine. How have women artists overcome or indeed embraced these notions intheir practice? The presence of women artists as teachers in schools modifies acertain number of dynamics of power, hierarchy and projection, and in doing so renewsand shifts some of the informal frameworks of art education. Existing historiography on art education in the20th century pays little attention to the special case of womenartists. It mainly concentrates on a few institutions – the Bauhaus, first andforemost among them – which asserted themselves as sites of the avant-garde.This emphasis has led to the neglect of the majority of art schools, the rhythmof their evolution, and the local struggles that played out there. More generally,the content of the courses, the dynamics of transmission and the functioning ofvarious groups within the schools also remain largely unknown. A lack ofsources is one of the major obstacles to research into teaching methods andinto the feminization of groups and the way in which this modifies the patternsof power, projection, imagination and narratives used in teaching. Situated, at least theoretically, outside ofthe art market, schools are laboratories where personalities as well aspractices are affirmed and reshaped. The time spent in these workshops remainsa particularly important moment for young artists and teachers alike:experimentation, freedom and the student community contribute to creating anenvironment where ideas, forms and biases are constantly questioned anddiscussed. It is with this in mind that we propose to study art schools as a sitein which the gender dynamics of the art world are crystalized, challenged andaltered. With no geographical restrictions and coveringthe entire 20th century, this conference aims to thinkdynamically about the relationship between women artists and art schools. Theaim is not only to highlight individual trajectories, but also to question on amore general level the struggles that have taken place in schools and theshifts that the teaching practice of women artists reveal, prepare or effect inthe field of contemporary creation. Papers Proposals&#160;The conference,under the direction of Déborah Laks, is carried out in partnership with theHPCA research programme of the École Nationale des Chartes and AWARE: Archivesof Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions. It will take place on December 3thand 4th 2020, at the École des Chartes in Paris.30 minutespapers may be presented in French and/or English; they will be recorded and a selectionmay be published in 2021.Proposals of a maximum of 3000 characters (500 words), accompanied by a brief CV and a list of publications, should be sent to Déborah Laks (colloque.artistes.enseignantes@gmail.com) before September 20th 2020, and will be evaluated by the scientific committee of the colloquium. Organising CommitteeDéborah Laks, CNRS, LIR3S, UMR 7366Stéphanie Louis, École Nationale des ChartesMatyldaTaszycka, AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and ExhibitionsScientific CommitteeLucile Encrevé, École NationaleSupérieure des Arts DécoratifsDéborah Laks, CNRS, LIR3S,UMR7366Charlotte Foucher-Zarmanian, CNRS, LEGS - UMR8238Camille Paulhan, Paris 1Elvan Zabunyan, Université Rennes 2 Download the call in englishTélécharger