The idea for this volume originated in the Historians of Netherlandish Art (HNA) affiliated session at the Southeast College Art Conference (SECAC), “Women Artists and Feminist Historiography in and of the Netherlands” held in Columbus, Ohio in October, 2017. Four panelists presented themes related to under-recognized women artists working in the Netherlands circa 1600. The papers shared a common theme of each woman's prominence during her own time and their subsequent historiographical neglect. The speakers all expressed frustration over the continued promotion of male artists and their work in publications and curricula, the conventional narrative of the myth of the male genius artist and concomitant erasures of women's contributions and experiences that Linda Nochlin revealed as a function of systemic discrimination over forty years ago.

Collaborative Knowledge-Making

As we learn when we come together at conferences, sharing knowledge through collaboration and inclusion is empowering. We learn, grow, and are enriched by difference of thought and manner. As a collection of essays, this volume is a collaboration of a kind – albeit still within the structures of the institutions of academia and publishing. I hope that it serves as a touchstone for future action towards structural change not only in scholarship, Netherlandish art history, and art history as a discipline, but also in the institutions that support it. While perhaps not radical, all the contributions here are important as we continue to deconstruct and reconstruct a foundation for inquiry.

Despite the presence of many female artists and art historians (my own institution boasts eighty percent women undergraduate art majors, and this is hardly an anomaly), the topics of research, courses, and methodologies employed continue to follow canonical (male) artists and the institutionalized norms of valuation, in biographies and monographs. The exhibition devoted to Clara Peeters in 2016 was the Prado's first ever exhibition devoted to a female artist.