The Art We Lose

Many professional art curators separate the art from the artist.

I can’t separate the artist from the art.

I will never be a master of art history, but I care about people’s stories, including those of the greatest artists.

What made them the masters they became? What were their lives like when they existed? How did it inform their art? How did they treat other people?

I have trouble separating Picasso’s mastery as an artist from his abuse of women.

I remember once walking through the Goulandris Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, turning the corner, and seeing Picasso’s Femme Nue aux Bras Levés (1907) and feeling the hatred of women.

I am by no means an art historian, nor do I pretend to be one, but to me, it was wildly fierce.

Inevitably, as a woman, I began to seek out more and more art by women, only to fully absorb that half the population’s art isn’t considered worthy enough to be preserved in a museum or displayed on the walls for posterity.

As a woman, once you fully appreciate the idea of the immeasurable loss of so much of history as seen through the eyes of women, it kicks you in the gut.

The loss is catastrophic.

I’ve walked through world-class museums, looking at each piece, trying to find more than one or two, if any, works by women.

That exercise has been so important because it’s informed me, in practice, about what’s considered worthy of saving within museums for future generations and for our collective history and human stories.

In my search to hear, read, and listen to the stories of people who were not considered worthy or important enough for honors, I’ve had the privilege of visiting museums that get it.

For example, in Barcelona, I visited the MEAM Europe Museum of Modern Art, where they had an exhibit of female artists.

As I walked slowly by each painting, absorbing (or trying) to understand what each artist was trying to communicate, I started to see a pattern.

Many female artists paint themselves and the world around them very differently from the way men do.

As I immersed myself in the art, I saw and felt deep sadness, grief, and sorrow.

For many of the pieces, there was existential pain.

Is it the collective burden that the world has placed on the shoulders of women?

Sure, there were whimsical pieces that brought joy, but those were outweighed by the ones that shared their burden.

What is it that’s said of women? We hold up the sky.

Two sides of the same coin with oppression and resilience.

I think of the little girl who walks through a museum on her field trip and sees many pieces of art of women, created by men, but she understands deep down, even if she is too young to articulate it, that something is missing.

I am an expert on living a life (even if it has been messy at times), and I know that in the connective tissue of history, institutional erasure matters on so many levels.

Absence matters because it also socially signals women’s role and place in every human construct we’ve created through our social, educational, and commercial lives.

It’s often said that the writing of history belongs to the victor.

But it also belongs to the artists.

What is “worth” saving of humanity’s collective history that we house in world-class museums absolutely matters.

It matters to me, and every person who loves the arts.

But it especially matters to that little girl who feels the spirits of those museums speaking to her, urging her to create and share her story and her world.

© 2026 Linda Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved.