Alina Cohen
Art patronage connects aesthetic taste with
power. By purchasing paintings and sculptures, collectors become tastemakers,
support artists’ careers, and—through portraiture—generate enduring images of
themselves. Art can also serve diplomacy: When collectors host a political
fundraiser in rooms filled with work by marginalized artists or give a world
leader a portrait of themselves as a gift, they signal specific values and
ambitions. By commissioning public buildings, churches, and museums, patrons
create potent architectural spaces for preserving their legacies and that of
their artwork.
For millennia, patriarchal societies around
the world have excluded women from traditional leadership roles. As patrons of
the arts, women have been able to exert soft power in creative ways. According
to Virginia Treanor, associate curator of the National Museum of Women in the
Arts, many women have also been drawn to “the intellectual and philosophical
opportunities” that art provided in eras when they had limited access to higher
education. By developing world-class collections and creating major art museums,
Treanor said, “women have shaped the course of art history.” While this list is
by no means exhaustive, it highlights 16 extraordinary female patrons spanning
geographies and centuries who have changed the way we look at art.
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-female-patrons-shaped-art-history
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