What the Venice Biennale Exhibition Highlights About the Legacies of Late Women Artists

Laura Smith, curator of the Whitechapel Gallery exhibition, finds Agar’s reemergence into the mainstream conscience poignant. “At a time when the rise of right-wing populism and our destruction of the natural world are increasingly dangerous, I think museums, at a minimum, should be able to hold a mirror to contemporary problems,” she said. While historic exhibitions might not be an obvious way to speak about the present, shifting focus away from the status of sex is vital to preserving what is truly important about these artists.

Smith pointed to Agar’s legacy as a particularly compelling one to revisit today: “An anti-fascist, a pacifist, and a Surrealist, Agar’s delight in nature and her feminist approach to making work informed her ambition to develop a universal visual language that she didn’t waver from for her entire career—and that is something that we can all learn from in this very particular moment.”