Gender In Norwegian Art (GINA): How gender, author biography and context affect financial and aesthetic art evaluation

In Norway, women represent 75% of all visual artists (Heian et al., 2015). Despite this, 90% of all art sold in Norway in 2018 was produced by men (Sjøvold et al., 2019). This discrepancy occurs despite that most art critics are women (Heian et al., 2015) and that more women visit museums than men (SSB, 2019). This issue speaks to a systemic gender discrimination that likely exists at multiple levels, ranging from private galleries to public institutions. .

The GINA project will systematically address the issues causing art made by women to be evaluated less, using Norway as an example but with the intent of applying the findings to the international art market and art history. The project involves several challenges: first of all, no previous project exists that has ever put all available research on gender, art, and psychology together into a coherent whole. Individual research on gender and art exists (e.g. Nochlin, 1988), as well as empirical studies on gender and art (e.g. Adams et al., 2017), but the two of them have never been put together into an interdisciplinary whole that speaks directly to societal issues or outlines exactly the cause of the gender discriminations. Ultimately, the gender discrimination in its entirety must be mapped, along with its causes, in order to suggest effective solutions that aims to reduce discrimination and promote equality. The GINA project therefore represents an interdisciplinary milestone that aims to thoroughly document the causes and solutions to gender discrimination, focusing on Norway in its data collections but with the aim to promote equality globally.