ArtMuse ArtTalks: Host Grace Anna Interviews Author Lori Zimmer
In this special episode from our ArtMuse ArtTalks series, host Grace Anna is joined by Lori Zimmer, author of I’m Not Your Muse: Uncovering the Overshadowed Brilliance of Women Artists & Visionaries, which shares the stories of thirty-one forgotten women of art history, accompanied by gorgeous illustrations by illustrator Maria Krasinski.
Though we hope to have full ArtMuse episodes on many of the women Lori Zimmer writes about in I’m Not Your Muse, her collection offers stories of women not yet covered on ArtMuse, highlighting not only their individual lives, but just how many incredible women have been unfairly written out of art history. I’m Not Your Muse is an important contributor to bringing these women’s stories back into the spotlight they deserve.
In this interview, host Grace Anna asks Lori Zimmer about what inspired her to write I’m Not Your Muse, the important role each of these women played in the creation or preservation of works of art, and how we can honor these women’s legacies and undo their unjust erasure from the history of art.
Listen to this special episode of ArtMuse ArtTalks:
I’m Not Your Muse: Uncovering the Overshadowed Brilliance of Women Artists & Visionaries can be ordered online HERE.
Lori Zimmer is an author, curator, and historian based in New York. She has written a number of non-fiction books, including Art Hiding in New York and Art Hiding in Paris, both incredible guides to art hiding in plain sight in each respective city. Lori Zimmer also consults as an artist liaison in copyright infringement cases, and has been an independent curator for over a decade. She also served on the Historic Districts Council of New York’s Board of Advisors from 2022 to 2024.
Maria Krasinski, who illustrated I’m Not Your Muse, is an illustrator, artist, and educator currently based in Paris. Fun fact: she was also a contestant on the popular game show, Jeopardy.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Hi listeners, host Grace Anna here. Today, I am thrilled to share a special episode from our ArtMuse ArtTalks series, in which I am joined by Lori Zimmer, author of I’m Not Your Muse: Uncovering the Overshadowed Brilliance of Women Artists & Visionaries, which shares the stories of thirty-one forgotten women of art history, accompanied by gorgeous illustrations by illustrator Maria Krasinski. Though we hope to have full ArtMuse episodes on many of the women Lori Zimmer writes about in I’m Not Your Muse, her collection offers stories of women not yet covered on ArtMuse, highlighting not only their individual lives, but just how many incredible women have been unfairly written out of art history. I’m Not Your Muse is an important contributor to bringing these women’s stories back into the spotlight they deserve.
In this interview, I ask Lori Zimmer about what inspired her to write I’m Not Your Muse, the many incredible women she discusses in her book and their immense careers in the arts, and how we can honor these women’s legacies and undo their unjust erasure from the history of art.
Lori Zimmer is an author, curator, and historian based in New York. She has written a number of non-fiction books, including Art Hiding in New York and Art Hiding in Paris, both incredible guides to art hiding in plain sight in each respective city. Lori Zimmer also consults as an artist liaison in copyright infringement cases, and has been an independent curator for over a decade. She also served on the Historic Districts Council of New York’s Board of Advisors from 2022 to 2024.
Maria Krasinski, who illustrated I’m Not Your Muse, is an illustrator, artist, and educator currently based in Paris. Fun fact: she was also a contestant on the popular game show, Jeopardy.
So with that, let’s dive into my fascinating conversation with the author, Lori Zimmer.
Grace Anna: Hi listeners, host Grace Anna here. Today I am joined by author Lori Zimmer to discuss her beautiful book, I’m Not Your Muse: Uncovering the Overshadowed Brilliance of Women Artists & Visionaries, as well as the accompanying card deck. I’m Not Your Muse shares the stories of thirty one women and honors their immense careers in the arts. These women range from artists, to writers, to dancers, and architects and come from all over the world. And I can’t wait to dive into their stories today.
So Lori, thank you so much for being here with me today. I absolutely loved I’m Not Your Muse, and it’s a book I’m going to return to again and again and again. But for our listeners today who have not yet read your book, can you introduce us to I’m Not Your Muse and tell us what it's about?
Lori: Thanks so much, Grace. It is an honor to be here with you today. So I’m Not Your Muse is my fifth book and it covers the stories of thirty one women that I heard about or barely heard about, but wanted to know more about that I felt really belonged as household names, especially for people like you and me who study Art History and are nerds about it. I was shocked at myself in my own research that I hadn't heard enough about these women. And I chose thirty one as a throwback to Peggy Guggenheim for her “31 Women Exhibition” in the 1950’s in New York. I just wanted to give her a little tribute. She doesn't need any more promotion, but I think she was a pretty interesting lady. So little kickback there, little extra woman there.
Grace Anna: And it was the first exhibition of purely female artists. So it was a super important exhibition!
Lori: Right, that writers at the time thought that it wasn't worth writing about because there were no good female artists, or so they said. But the book covers more than just visual artists. I know there are plenty of amazing books out there that do focus solely on visual artists, and I wanted to bring more creatives into the fold; filmmakers and writers and dancers, like you said earlier. I just thought that it was more of a full circle of breath of creativity.
Grace Anna: And you have women from all over the world, which I really loved the inclusion of; a Korean artist, a Chinese artist, a Sri Lankan architect. So really there's an eclectic amount of stories and it's really cool because none of the women have been covered yet on ArtMuse, so our listeners will be learning about totally new women. And it just goes to show how many women there are that have been unfairly written out of history!
Lori: Oh, endless.
Grace Anna: What inspired you to write I’m Not Your Muse? Was there a particular woman’s story that first struck you or how did the idea for the book come about?
Lori: Well, I'm a research nerd in that I love to go on little Wikipedia wormholes and like to start to research people, and that's what I do for fun, which is pretty dorky. So I already had a running list of people going that I like, their names would come about in my research and I'd be like, “Ooh, who's that?” And I'm a dork and I kept an Excel file. And for my last two books, which are about Art History in Paris and Art History in New York, I came across these names over and over again, and they all kind of had the same story. So there wasn't really one specific woman. It was sort of like they were mentioned, and then the story ended, and so I had to take it upon myself to dive deeper. And that list just grew and grew and grew. And I only kept track of about a hundred. You know, there's thousands, but that's sort of how it happened.
Why I was inspired to write the book was literally for inspiration. I thought it was inspiring to see that these women a hundred years ago, with societal pressures that they had on them, still excelled. You know, it's like you can't keep us down, but imagine how great we could be if we didn't have all of these fabricated, oppressive factors on us. It went from inspiration to sort of, in this new climate of today where we've gone a little bit backwards- it's more of a declaration now. I'm reading my own words in a different way, just as proof that women have always succeeded. No matter what you throw on us, no matter what you put on us, you can't tamp down brilliance. It's gonna come out no matter what. So I'm making a statement with this as well, a hundred years later.
Grace Anna: Yes, and it's so important to come out amidst all of the discrimination that women are facing today. So they were important then, and you are important now. It is really important to write about.
And I found it really interesting that in the beginning of your book you talk about being inspired by these women, but also that a lot of these stories angered you. And I thought that was very interesting that you included that emotional process that you went through in reading about these stories. Because I can completely relate. It's often jaw dropping when you do the research and you read these stories and you read about the injustices that these women continue to face today. And then you do become, as you describe getting very protective of them, and you almost sort of fall in love with them because their stories are so immense and you are, in a sense, a protector of their legacy and someone who is coming out there and fighting for their inclusion in history.
I want to read, if it's okay with you, a quote from the introduction in which you talk about this process, and then I'd love for you to speak about this emotional process and perhaps how this anger fueled your project, but you write, “Writing this book changed me. Truthfully, at times, writing it made me really, really angry. During one particularly long research period, I was basically pissed off or seething for weeks. The injustices repeated over and over again with every woman’s story really affected me. Once I punched through the initial membrane of anger, though, I started to form an attachment to these women. I suddenly felt protective of them, responsible for them”
So can you speak a little more to this emotional process and the anger that came up for you?
Lori: Also, I just want to add, I probably feel protective of them for life. Whenever I see any of their names mentioned, I'm like, “was she, is she being treated right? Is she being written about correctly?” But, so I'm a middle-aged woman and you know, as I've evolved and as the world has gotten more cruel to women in the past years or months, I've realized how much internalized misogyny that I've had just from growing up in America or in this world.
And I've realized that there are levels and steps to empowerment. It's kind of like the steps of grief. Like you don't just say “I’m okay” one day, you have to understand each level of it. And anger, I think is a really important level to get ourselves to empowerment because that's proving to ourselves that there's an injustice and there is something wrong there. And that deep down we know it's not right. Even though we've accepted a lot of other things about misogyny as normal, which isn't so.
So reading about these women and researching, and I go all out, I go to rare book rooms, museums, interviews, you know, you're an art historian, you have to cover all of your bases and get a lot of varied facts because the writers of history aren't always telling the whole story. They have an opinion at times. But reading about these women and realizing that this happened so long ago made me angry now about how we still face a lot of these same things. So that's where the anger came from. But then in the end, I got to the empowerment part because they still succeeded enough for me to write these things about them, to achieve paintings and writings and all of these things that like they made it. So why can't I? Why can't we? You know what I mean?
But when I was in the research phase of it, it was so incredibly depressing. And it was winter and every story was like, “and then her boss took credit for it and then her husband took credit for it”, especially Alice Guy-Blance, if I can bring up a woman right away. She was so incredible. So she was the first female director, but more importantly she was at that first film screening, the demonstration film that the Lumiere Brothers did. And it was an invitation only. And she was working for Gaumont Films, which was a competitor, and she was invited as Leon Gaumont’s secretary, and she left that day seeing the film. So the film was a demonstration film. It was basically people walking out of the Lumiere factory and at that time, with filmmaking, they were just concerned with the equipment and all the companies were trying to outdo each other, you know, having the better cameras and she instead saw the potential of film and was like, “what if we told stories, what we made stories!” Like, duh, like that's the entire movie industry. And she made thousands of films over the course of her career. First for Gaumont, then her own, then with her husband. And each person along the line in her life has tried to take credit for her work, and she spent- there's some fabulous footage of her on YouTube as an older woman, just trying to track down and take credit for her own work. And it's frustrating. It angered me. You know, it's, it's like, why do we even have to do this for the things that we have actually done? Someone else is that threatened by us? Do it yourself. Do something better than me then.
Grace Anna: Absolutely. Her story really struck me too. And you did such an immense job telling her life story in the book. Yeah, I mean, she was this film visionary. She was also, as you described, the first person to have a film with an all black cast, and a film that depicted pregnancy. I mean, she was a groundbreaking filmmaker and visionary. And she is one example of a woman who experienced that erasure from history in her lifetime. Some of the other women, it happened after they've passed and in the recording of history. And historians are more to blame. But she is one of the women who unfortunately saw it happen before her eyes, that she was no longer being given credit for the films that she had made and for the impact she had on the film industry. So I think her story is really, really important and it's definitely one of the ones that stuck with me.
Lori: I wonder, you know, when I'm in these libraries and these private book rooms, what the other people there studying think of me because I know that I can't hide my thoughts on my face and I have a very open book face and I would be reading these books with like snarls…but whatever.
Grace Anna: And what I found interesting too, and we briefly talked about this before this interview, is part of that anger also feels surrounding the term “muse”. Quite literally, your book rejects the term muse. It's called, I'm Not Your Muse. And of course we were talking about how my show is called ArtMuse, but really we are very aligned in our missions, which is to tell the full life story of these women and see these women not as supporters of someone else's career, but to see these women as individuals in their own right who lived immense lives that cover from birth to death and a thousand different things that have nothing even to do with the artist that perhaps they're best known for today, for being their “muse”
But can you talk about the title of your book and this rejection of the term “muse” and why it is important that we see these women as women in their own right and appreciate their full life story?
Lori: I don't have a problem with the word muse. I have a problem with the way that history has treated it because it seems to be a period after it: muse. And it dismisses anything else that they've done in their lives or any other value that, especially Art History has assigned to that woman.
And the other side of that for me is a little selfish and it's a little personal because I have been with my partner for eleven years, who is an artist, and before I was writing books, I was working in the art world and I was a curator and people to this day, this actually even happened recently, they assume that I am his assistant. I'm in my forties and still people are like, “oh wait, you do stuff yourself? Wait, you write books” Like, what do you think I do? Do you think I walk around behind my fiancé, like, no, I'm a person. I got a master's degree. I did my time. So I'm kind of relating to these women because a lot of them were dismissed as muses. And you know, it started out studying the Surrealists because I'm really obsessed with Paris (I'm gonna move there one day) but reading about artists working in Paris from the early 1900’s through interwar and in general these artists that we think are so amazing, which I do, I do still think are amazing. They just looked at women as femmes infants, women-child, these beautiful pretty things that were supposed to instill these great ideas in men while these women were also having their great ideas themselves, but we don't hear about that because the writer of history dismissed them as “muse”. So I think of muse as something that could be this beautiful thing, but it's really a consolation prize. It's like you're, “you're pretty honey. Here you go. Go into this little case I've made for you and this is all you're good for, is looking good and inspiring me” when that's not the case. So that's my problem with muse. The Greek muses- I love this story. I love mythology, but I think it's sort of been sort of co-opted to mean something limiting.
Grace Anna: Yeah, I love what you said about the period, you know, muse, period. It is very limiting. I also loved the quote that you included in your book from Martha Gellhorn, where she says, “I will not be a footnote in another’s story” talking of course, about her marriage to Ernest Hemingway. But ultimately“muse” is really about inspiring someone else's career, period. Not about the careers and the ambitions that these women had on their own, apart from their participation with these artists.
Lori: Exactly. And with my partner, I've posed for him, and so people assume- what, because I'm in two paintings or three paintings, that's all I do? What a boring life that would be! But muse and, I would not have a problem with, you know? But it's two different things and unfortunately these women have been written in those terms.
Grace Anna: Yeah. And one thing we also try to do on our show is redefine what muse means. You know, they're not these passive models that are standing there and could be interchangeable with anyone else. They are bringing their own performance. They're bringing their own experience into these works of art and really to see them as co-collaborations rather than just someone that's standing there posing for an artist. It's redefining what that “muse and”, and redefining what muse is.
Lori: Yeah, I think that a lot of women in this book, in history, get put into that muse category as well if they take something that already exists. For example, Alice Guy-Blache or Maria Tallchief or Clara Rockmore, they take something that a man started and they see it and they make it better. They're like, “oh, actually it could really, really go further with this idea.” So it's a total collaboration. But instead the man gets the credit. It's frustrating. Why are they so afraid to share? Like, can't we all just be really awesome and good and successful and create beautiful things together? Like what's the big deal? I don't understand it. I mean I do understand it, but society…
Grace Anna: So you mentioned a few of the names just now. Can you tell us the stories of a few of these women, maybe some of the women that stand out to you the most?
Lori: Oh gosh. Well, don't say that because they're all my babies!
Grace Anna: Fair enough.
Lori: But I will talk about Clara Rockmore for a hot second because I think she may be one of the least known ones in this book. She was basically the theremin- are you familiar with the theremin? The first electronic instrument? “Good Vibrations” by The Beach Boys: that noise in the background or, a kitschy fifties movie. It's an instrument based on electronic fields, and it's got a console here and an antenna here, and you can create music. So Leon Theremin invented it. And it was more like a science, you know, it's kind of interesting in the fact that it is the root of electronic music as far as electronic music has come now.
And Clara Rockmore was a concert violinist, cellist, from a small age, and she basically was practicing the wrong way her whole life and damaged her hand. And it was really frustrating to her. Her sister was a concert pianist and she thought she'd spent her life working in orchestras and performance halls and she messed up her hand pretty badly. And she met Leon at, I love stories like this, at a party at the Plaza, in the 20’s. I love New York, you know, we live here, so it's like an extra little added historical bonus there. But when he invented the Theremin, it was just kind of rudimentary and because she just immediately had an innate understanding of it, and with her complete understanding, but also suggestions to make the instrument better, she elevated this kitschy, funky science experiment to an instrument that was played in concert halls. I don't think he could have done that without her. She saw the potential in his invention and she helped him to improve it and make it more user friendly. And she played at Carnegie Hall with it, which is pretty, pretty incredible. It would've just been like a kooky science project otherwise, and she's the one that inspired Bob Moog, who made the synthesizers and whatnot. There's only one existing video of her playing, and she's in her seventies, I think. Bob Moog tracked her down and he filmed her and finally got what she could do, captured so we could watch it now, you know, pretty amazing. But she is one of the women I'm talking about where she may not have invented it, but her brilliance made it something better.
Same for Maria Tallchief, who was the first- I'm just really getting into here- she was the first American prima ballerina, which was a big deal because ballet was such a European cultural asset back when it was first European ballet troops would come to America and tour, but we didn't really have our own, it wasn't an American thing. I think now, I don't know about you, but when I was growing up, a lot of kids took ballet. It was just part of dance class. I don't know. It was the 80’s. It was just a thing that you do and every Christmas we watch the Nutcracker. And Maria Tallchief was also native American. Just pretty incredible to be accepted at the time as the first prima ballerina and she worked with George Balanchine, who is given the credit for revolutionizing ballet and making it palatable for the American audience. And what I mean by palatable is more- it was very traditional before this in the European sense. He kind of shook it up and added energy and vigor, and that was due to Maria's translation of his choreography. Like they just kind of excelled together. They completely understood each other and she danced. The Nutcracker was kind of an obscure ballet at the time, and because of her role as Sugar Plum Fairy, it was so exciting and energetic and interesting. It's become an American tradition now and it's pretty incredible. I know some people that have heard of her, but we should know who she is. I know Balanchine and I'm not even a ballet fan. It's kind of interesting like that. They should go together because they did this together, but they were married at one point and that's sort of what dismisses you- as “wife”. You’re othered. And that's sort of what I mean by I’m Not Your Muse, you're othered. And it's just not something I'm remotely interested in. I want to be a muse and.
Grace Anna: Yeah, definitely. We also talked about Suzanne Farrell when I interviewed Francine Prose, because she wrote about Suzanne Farrell and also being this incredible ballerina that worked with Balanchine and really enhanced and brought these creations of his to life through her immense talent. But I had never heard of either of them. I had heard of Balanchine, and I'm also not a ballet connoisseur, but Balanchine is a household name and these women are not, and it's an injustice because they were a huge part of the New York ballet scene and the American ballet scene and are not given the credit they deserve.
Lori: Yeah. And how easy, giving credit is free, you know, it's really easy to do.
Grace Anna: Absolutely.
Grace Anna: One of the other things that really struck me reading the stories in your book, especially given the time, and I do want to preface this by saying the majority of the stories in your book are from around the mid 1800’s and span approximately to the mid 1900’s. Some a little further, some a little prior, but we're talking about that general time period. And I was really struck by how many of the women were openly queer at that time. I'm talking about five or six different women in your book, your collection of stories. So can we talk about how brave these women were in being openly queer at that time and, and perhaps you can talk about some of the stories? Obviously, Eileen Gray, Loie Fuller etc. There's plenty of others, but these are stories of women who were not just trailblazers in their creative work, but also in being fearless in who they were and open about their sexuality.
Lori: In some ways, I think that it goes hand in hand, their being so open about their sexuality and then, that kind of gave them permission to excel at these things that they were really good at. Because if you're casting off that layer of society at that point in time, you know, women were expected to, if they did work, give up their work and become a wife and mother. So although they were criticized more, it kind of let them dismiss that expectation on them because they weren't. Do you know what I mean by declaring that they were queer? Not that it made anything easier for them whatsoever. But people like Eileen Gray though, she was very wealthy, she was from an aristocratic family. This book is a combination of women from nothing and women from money. There's kind of no one that was middle class. It was harder, you know, you either had nothing to lose or you had your family's money, you know what I mean? It's sort of this and that.
I think though, that my most favorite story of queer women in my book are Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, who- they were such badasses, man. So they worked as a team. Even though Claude Cahun gets most of the credit. So in the 1920s they were circulating the Paris Surrealist scene and they have very interesting background stories.They fell in love early, but then their parents got married, so they were stepsisters, which is a fantastic cover story for them. Not that I think they ever adhered to a cover story. They did not care. Claude was shaving her head and painting her head magenta and she was just a living embodiment of art. And in the 20’s they made these really fabulous photos and collages that explored gender identity before anyone even could put a word to it. And just questioning “why we are wearing dresses? What's the difference? Clothes are clothes. Why do we have to adhere to feminism and masculinity? Why can't we just do what feels good for us?” And a lot of their portraits are of Claude, she's the model so that's sort of why I think she gets the credit. Their works have been discovered only in the last 20 years, and a lot of them, they kept for themselves because they were wealthy making art for themselves. They didn't have to worry about selling them or making a bank.
But when the Germans were moving across Europe and Paris was about to be occupied. They decided to retreat to the Isle of Jersey. They had a house there, their family house that they would go to in the summer, in the Channel Islands. They figured the Nazis wouldn't go there. It would be a safe little place where they could ride out the war in peace and instead there was a whole base set up there, which was not super fun. And at this point they were in their forties or fifties, early fifties and I just love that instead of just riding it out, being two queer women hiding from soldiers, they were like, “you know what? Nope, we're gonna resist”. And they became this two women resistance cell and my God, the bravery, I just cannot even imagine. So they decided to pose, as a German soldier, the unknown soldier, who was questioning Hitler's motive, and they would write in German notes, like: “Are we lining Hitler's pockets or are we perfecting the world?” And just challenging him, because at this point, the war had been going on for a while and people were tired and there were rations and blah, blah, blah. Aside from all of the horrors, it was just not a good everyday life for anybody. And Hitler and his men were getting richer and people were getting poorer. But what's so incredible to me is they would wander the island and place these notes in books, in newspapers, in pockets of soldiers. So they would find them and be like, “what is this?” Or they, they would break into the church there and put up a big banner and just make all of this propaganda that- it wasn't anti-Nazi, it was questioning, “what are we doing? Like who's benefiting?” And by the end, they did get caught after seven years. Five or seven years. And basically when they were caught, they thought that they were a network, like a sophisticated network of hundreds of people.
Grace Anna: Wow.
Lori: And it was really just two middle aged ladies resisting to the very end. What bravery. Incredible. Plus their artwork is amazing and gorgeous.
Grace Anna: Yeah, it really is.
Lori: It's an added bonus.
Grace Anna: I recommend everyone Google search some of their photographs. They really are amazing, and I think that's a great example of a story, like you said, where they were fearless in their sexuality and in their artworks, and then also in this political sense in which they rebelled against the Nazi occupation. I can't imagine.
Grace Anna: So we kind of touched upon this before, but there were certainly many women who were successful in their lives and maintained their success throughout their lives and didn't see that erasure of their legacies in their lifetime. But I do think it's important, and something that I touch upon in ArtMuse a lot too, is that while a lot of these women were revolutionary and really pushed against societal boundaries as much as they could, that said, unfortunately in the end, they could only push so much and many of them fell victim to those same societal limitations. And I was struck by a few of the stories that maybe didn't have the happiest ending in your book. So if you can talk about some of the women, like Ethel Reed for example, who had this immense success and then was kind of taken down by the limitations of society and the prejudices against women and their limited options in terms of how to survive in society.
So if you can speak to some of these women who ultimately were never able to maintain their success because of these limitations?
Lori: Right, because a couple of these women did die in obscurity and poverty, more than I would like to say. And again, the ones that came from poverty as opposed to, well not Ethel, but as opposed to intense and immense family money.
But the person that I think embodies this the most is Pan Yuliang, if you don't mind me talking about her. And the reason being, she's one I really feel protective of. So she was the first Chinese artist to paint in the Western style during the industrial period or you know, China went through a lot of revolutions in the end of the Empire and whatnot in the early 1900s. And there was a time when China was sending artists to Europe because Western ideas were finally welcome. However, female artists in China, really, were only supposed to paint nature, butterflies, the occasional portrait, a mountain, whatever, and she was obsessed with impressionism and post impressionism, which was super interesting for that time. And she was obsessed with painting nudes and you know, actually another, not to sidetrack myself, but that's Suzanne Valadon, another artist in this book, she was the first to paint the male nude.
No one was interested in that. But anyway, back to Pan. She was poor. And she couldn't afford to hire models. Sometimes she did, but rarely. So she would paint women at bathhouses and she would also paint her own body. And the added bonus of that was she was painting non-white bodies. So you know, if you study Art History, women's bodies were always idealized and for the male gaze, we all know this, if we study this stuff and Pan was painting it as it was.
But she has a tragic early story in that her parents died when she was 13 and her uncle was the only one left, and he sold her to a brothel. So today we would be like, “oh, she's 13. She is a trafficked child”. But history calls her a prostitute, and it really upsets me because when I was doing research, I found a bunch of articles from the late 2010’s, Websites and publications that I enjoy reading, and they were doing these kitschy titles that were like “From prostitute to Painter, from Red Light to whatever”, you know, romanticist. And it was just like, wow, really? We're really saying that? But she faced that in her life. So she made hundreds of paintings. She was a true artist in that she would paint on the backs of things, like she just couldn't stop and she moved to Paris because working in China, people found out that she used to be a child in a brothel and they would deface her exhibitions and be like “you're just a prostitute”. They would write horrible things. So she moved to Paris and for the entire time she was there, she just wanted to go back to China, but China wouldn't let her come back because she was such an abomination painting these modern things, painting bodies, and a background of being a prostitute. And she died in an attic in Paris in the 80’s. China took back some of her paintings and I guess there is a museum there, but a lot of her paintings are also in Paris, which I love, at a museum. Like you can still see her work. So she is given a little bit of credit.
But I just think it's really sad that in modernity we're still bringing up the thing that happened to her as a 13-year-old. What does it have to do with her painting ability, you know what I mean? That wouldn't happen to a man. We wouldn't be like, “well, when you were 13 you broke a boy's leg and so you're the leg breaker”. You know what I mean? Like it just wouldn't, it's silly, but we pick on things for women and define them by that instead of their talent or what they're doing or who they're presenting to us, who they're telling us they are. Instead, we tell them who they are.
Grace Anna: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, she could never escape that “reputation” throughout her lifetime, and as you said, is something she had absolutely no control over. And it's really sad that there are still articles coming out today in which she's still being tied to that “title” or “reputation”. It's really disappointing that that is still happening today.
Lori: It is. But it's not uncommon.
Grace Anna: I know. Well, actually, I was gonna ask- I thought another interesting moment in the book was you confronting a Manhattan gallerist who had an exhibition on Tiffany lamps, in which they left out Clara Driscoll's name, who designed a lot of the Tiffany lamps that are most famous today. Could you tell us a bit about that moment and how you felt and, and how the gallerist reacted to your confrontation?
Lori: Oh, it didn't go well. I actually just walked by that place on Friday. So it's funny you say that. I was thinking about him as I walked by. So in 2008 or 2009, some archives and correspondence were found, and it turns out that a lot of Tiffany's lamps were designed by Clara Driscoll, who was the head of the Tiffany girls. And look, I don't know much about Tiffany himself, but the situation is a little bit different than in some of the other stories in that, the women that design lamps, it was all under Tiffany's name. Like you're working for a manufacturer. It's a little bit different than being an artist and having another artist take your work. Tiffany wasn't targeting her and excluding her. It's more that history did, because a hundred years on, we want to know who designed the things instead of the Tiffany company. And so I, I put that squarely on historians. So there's an amazing collection at the New York Historical Society that talks about Clara and gives all the credit and I cannot emphasize to you enough to go there and see it. It's beautiful. And they did the wall labels (I love a good wall label) and they do amazing wall labels there and they give her the credit she is due.
But there is this very fancy gallery on Park Avenue that had a big exhibition and they also have a lot of Art Nouveau, and I'm a big Art Nouveau fan. So I was going through it and it was after I'd researched the book. So I knew that she had designed the Dragonfly and the Daffodil and the Wisteria. She's given full credit at museums and it did not say that. And then there's a catalog, and they're following you around asking you if you need help. And I was like, “excuse me I was just wondering why isn't there credit here?” And they're like, “well she's on our website”. And I was like, “okay, but you know you're selling these, shouldn't people know who designed it? Like people want to know if they're gonna be buying an original Tiffany lamp and spending, I don't even know how much, because they wouldn't tell me, more than I can ever imagine. Wouldn't they love to celebrate all of history? And they got really nasty with me and then walked away.
And so I went home and I looked on their website and it was on a blog post from like three years prior where they just made a little, you know, nothing. I had to scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll to 2019. And it's a shame, but they did not see my side because they're just equated. It's sort of like what we were talking about before we were recording how some facets of the art world just see what we think are these beautiful representations of humanity as property and dollars and cents, and so they like the Tiffany name. That's all that mattered to them. Commodifying it, which I get, it’s a business, but again, it doesn't cost anything to add their actual origin. I think it makes it more interesting!
Grace Anna: Absolutely. It could help the sales! But it's really sad. You know, I think museums are starting to, I've noticed slowly, not just with crediting women, but I've noticed some museums starting to add wall labels about artworks that were stolen in World War II by the Nazis. I think museums are slowly starting to kind of share these stories that were pushed away or shoved under the rug before. But yeah, I think with auction houses and galleries that are maybe more sales oriented, they seem to be a little bit more behind with this kind of stuff. Maybe they don't want to rock the boat, or like you said, their objective is to just put the brand name out there and get the highest price. But I was interviewing author Mark Braud about Kiki di Montparnasse and one of Man Ray's photographs of her sold record breaking millions and millions and millions of dollars. She was like maybe in the third or fourth paragraph, and she was mentioned as an aside. Even though the photograph is not just of her, it is a co-collaboration with her in which she has morphed her body into the shape of a violin.
So it's disappointing but despite the reaction, I am proud of you for saying something because once you start thinking in this way, you do walk the world with these thoughts I went to the Sergeant show recently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I'm thinking, “are they giving the women in the paintings enough credit?” To their credit, most of the women were at least named in the description. But yeah, once you see things through this lens, you really walk the world and it's jaw dropping how often these women's names are just left out of the story or not given credit or left out of the label and the catalog. And it's important to stand up for them through your book and you do in writing a book like this. And then little moments like that, even if it ultimately doesn't change that gallerist’s mind- I'm proud of you for doing that. So thank you for sticking up for Clara!
Lori: At the root of it, it's lazy, right? I think that gallerists especially, I could tell having worked in galleries, this person thinks that, “you know, well, we're a business, we're commerce, so it's different”. But if you're gonna sell anything to do with history, I think it's your responsibility. I'm sorry, you need to earn that money. You need to earn it, and you need to earn it by telling the full story. Otherwise, you're kind of lying and you're being deceiving and it's lazy. We have Google, like, come on. Information is easier to get. And I know it's not all true on the internet but it's where you start and then you take out one book, like, geez.
Grace Anna: Definitely it's readily available.
Grace Anna: You know, I thought you made a really interesting point in our discussion and also in the book, that some of these women witnessed, like we said, their erasure from history in their lifetimes. A lot of these women didn't. A lot of these women were given awards and accolades. They were well known. They had articles written about them during their lifetimes and have since been written out of history. I can read your actual quote because I have it here and I think it's really well said. You write that many of these women “were all wildly successful and known in their lifetimes. They had clients and received accolades, were written about in newspapers, and attracted professional recognition. It was not their contemporaries, but the writers of history who omitted their names from books and encyclopedias, gradually phasing them out from cultural memory”. So, I think that's a really interesting point, that of course they faced adversity, you know, they faced challenges, they were living a hundred years ago, but actually, a lot of the blame is on historians and contemporary historians.
So why do you think these historians have erased them from history and how can we slowly start to correct this injustice?
Lori: It's such a mystery to me and I think what we were talking about before is like jealousy and feelings of inadequacy of the writers and the people that they prefer and favor and represent what I was talking about before, the levels of empowerment. I think history is an important part of that, to not just think about today and who we are today, but to give recognition to the people that did things before us.
When I was writing that quote, I was specifically, if you don't mind me going right into talking about one of the women, I was specifically thinking about Louise Blanchard Bethune, who is the first person in the book. She was also the first practicing licensed female architect in America in 1881. And this is another personal one for me. So the illustrator of my books is Maria Krasinski, and she and I met when we were nine years old. We were in Gifted & Talented, which is also known as the Nerd Herd. We were nerds, and it was an amazing program in the 80’s where we went to another school one day a week, and we did all of these incredibly creative and scientific things. It was a golden age of public school, of free school. But anyway, my point being is that we grew up in Buffalo, New York, and that is where Louise Blanchard Bethune practiced and she was wildly successful. She had her own firm. She was one of the first women to buy a woman's bicycle, which was of course a symbol of feminism because it gave women mobility by themselves.They could be independent, and she founded a bike club for women and she had the first outfit, which were pantaloons for riding a bike.
So I grew up going to this hotel in downtown Buffalo that when I was a kid, was incredibly abandoned, but there were raves in the basement and I was that person that snuck out at 14 and went dancing to techno with a bunch of college students. And it was in the basement of the Hotel Lafayette that she designed. Up until I researched this book, which was before, there has since been a fabulous book, and an exhibition at the University of Buffalo about Louise, but I couldn't believe that she was from Buffalo, and I felt so robbed growing up there and being really involved in the culture in Buffalo. And I would take classes at the art museum, and we weren't taught that the first female architect was from Buffalo. I felt really robbed of that situation.
And it goes back to the New York Times machine, which I love. You can read newspapers from the beginning of their inception and there was an article, so this hotel was built for the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, but it was delayed. And so it opened after. And when it was opened, it was the 15th nicest hotel in the country, which is sort of a big deal. And it made it to the New York Times, which is also sort of a big deal. And the article written about it mentions the man who financed it, the man who owned the construction company, the men who owned the league that rented the seventh floor, the men who were the lease holders of the rest of it.
And then it said the men there for the opening- many great men were in attendance. And it didn't mention Louise or the architecture firm at all Bethune and Bethune. Have you ever heard of an article about a building that didn't mention the architect? Like that's usually the first thing.
And it's intentional. It’s intentional. Women were being left off intentionally, so I'm not sure what we can do about it. I can't tell every writer of history now to include them, but I would love to, we just have to try to remember them and we have to try to find out as much as we can. That's all I'm gonna say, and what I've said with this book. I know they're just little vignettes. I'm not a biographer. I have no interest in writing a whole biography, but I hope that it inspires writers to be like, “oh, I love her story”. And then to give these women, some of them do have great biographies, but a lot of them don't, to give them what they're due, like these comprehensive biographies.
Grace Anna: Or films, documentaries!
Lori: Or films, or anything? Yes. I love that there's a zillion Instagram (I don't use TikTok, I'm old), but there's a zillion Instagram accounts dedicated to this, with these little vignettes. They're really short and it's like a good spark. But I hope that that inspires more because I don't know how to, other than I'm only responsible for myself, right? So I don't know how to influence other people to include the actual players in these accomplishments other than saying it.
Grace Anna: Yeah, and you definitely do say it in your book and you have to hope that there's a ripple effect. I think that with ArtMuse all the time, that if I can change the way one person looks at a painting and when they look at that painting, they now see the woman and her full life that she lived, and then that friend might tell another friend and then that friend might tell another, you know, so you really hope that there is a ripple effect. And as much as there's some disappointment in today's world in terms of that we have not come as far as we had hoped, I feel there is more discussion in Art History, in starting to look at these women and write biographies on these women. Katie Hessel is a huge proponent of female artists and she's really managed to break the boundary and her book is in every bookstore and museum gift shop you could imagine and in every language.
Lori: I'm looking at it. I have it right here.
Grace Anna: It's a great book. But, I think that ripple effect is being felt to some extent and that's why it's so important to do the work that you do and to have written the book that you did.
And also, I wanted to talk about the cards because that's how I first discovered you was seeing your deck of cards at a museum gift shop. And they're so beautiful. And there's actually a few more women- there's 40 women that you describe in the cards. So you snuck in a few extra. Because I know it's so hard to narrow down. I also, by the way, have a list of hundreds and hundreds of women.
But could you tell us a little bit about the cards and also how people can use them? How can they be another source of inspiration for people to look into these women on their own and learn more about them?
Lori: Well, they're exciting for me because the cards are a first. So I’m Not Your Muse is our, as in Maria and I, our third book with Running Press, and we have Art Hiding in New York and Art Hiding in Paris and now looking back, I'm like, cards would've been great, but, you know, it just wasn't offered to us. But I love these because, you know, I'm a big reader, but a lot of my friends aren't. And that's the norm. You know, we have short attention spans, we have the internet, we have social media, so people learn in different ways. And so I thought this was a really good way to, for those people who are not gonna sit down with my Nonfiction book and read it in an afternoon. And so, I also loved that I got to include those nine extra women because they were on my major list. But honestly, I couldn't find enough information about them that I thought I could do them full justice. I know it's out there, but when you're writing about 31 women, I didn't have time to do it all. And two in particular, well. Sada Yacco is one of them. She was the first woman in Kabuki and she actually knew Loie Fuller too, which I love. There's been a couple of overlaps in the books. I'm like, “oh my gosh, they knew each other”? But the other one is Lee Miller, who, there's a lot about her. That movie that Kate Winslet is in is done really really well. But she was going to be in the book, but I just found her story so sad that I couldn't get it right and I didn't want to include it if I couldn't get it right.
But anyway, the cards just have the beautiful portrait that Maria illustrated on one side. Fun fact is that she's not just redrawing a historical photograph. She has a whole collection of fashions from every era and she chooses what they wear and there's all these Easter egg hints from their life. So Maria, my illustrator, is also a genius and she was a jeopardy contestant. She is the best partner to have because we bounce things off each other and she could write these books, but she just doesn't. So it's a wonderful thing to have. So there's all of these Easter eggs, and I know a lot of cards in these formats are Tarot, which was offered, but I didn't want to add mysticism to these, I just didn't think it fit. No judgment, it just wasn't the vibe. But what I've seen friends do and what people do and what I do is get some of them framed. You know, they make a little set. I love studying and research and whatnot, and so I put one on like a mirror that I want to think about every day or on my refrigerator. I've given them to people. I've left some around New York, I don't know on the off chance that one person is gonna be like, “who's Edmonia Lewis and why is her card on this corner on the Lower East side?’ I don't know.
But we just call them inspiration cards because, as you know, it comes with little mini bios to kind of get you intrigued for more. And I thought that for the friends that aren't really into sitting down and reading a book and love to consume their information digitally, that it would give them a starting point to go on the search, the hashtag, or go on the Wikipedia spiral that I like to go on, the rabbit hole. I just thought it was a different way of absorbing and learning without these women if having to sit and read a book is not your jam, which I respect, you know?
Grace Anna: Yeah. Absolutely. And the illustrations really are so beautiful and I love that it makes it more approachable. You can just appreciate these stories in a different way. I'm gonna start doing that now- putting a card out and maybe rotating them in terms of which women's energy and vibe I want to channel on said week.
Lori: I've also found kids are into it.
Grace Anna: Yeah I could see that, definitely.
Lori: So teachers use them. Discussion topics!
Grace Anna: Endless possibilities. And I found them in a museum gift shop. You might come across them as well, obviously online, but in art shops and museum gift shops as well. So be on the lookout. Lori, thank you so much for your work and for being here with me today!
Lori: Thank you. I'm so honored that you had me on. I really appreciate it, Grace.
Thank you so much for listening to this special episode from our ArtMuse ArtTalks series in which I interview the author Lori Zimmer. We have included a link to purchase I’m Not Your Muse: Uncovering the Overshadowed Brilliance of Women Artists & Visionaries in the show notes of this episode. Not only is it an immense collection of stories that we have not yet covered on ArtMuse, but it is so beautifully illustrated, and I know our listeners will adore it just as much as I do.
We will be releasing one more interview in the coming weeks as part of our ArtMuse ArtTalks series as we prepare for Season Three. Season Three of ArtMuse will return this October.
We cannot wait to continue to share these fruitful conversations with you.
Until next time, bye for now.
