Women: Female Roles in Art and Society of the Netherlands
Thijs Weststeijn et al.
Together with Elizabeth Alice Honig (University of Maryland) and Judith Noorman (University of Amsterdam), Thijs Weststeijn edited Women: Female Roles in Art and Society of the Netherlands. Long overdue in the history of the Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art, this volume foregrounds women as creators, patrons, buyers, and agents of change in the arts of the Low Countries.
Female agency in the visual culture of the Low Countries
Venturing beyond the participation of ‘exceptional’ individuals, chapters investigate how women produced paintings, sculptures, scientific illustrations, and tapestries as well as their role in architectural patronage and personalised art collections.
Teasing out a variety of socio-economic, legal, institutional, and art-theoretical dimensions of female agency, the volume highlights the role of visual culture in women’s lived experience and self-representation, asking to what extent women challenged, subverted, or confirmed societal norms in the Netherlands.