Art and Advocacy WATERCOLORIST WANTS TO INCREASE FEMALE REPRESENTATION IN MUSEUMS
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ccording to a study by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, only 3 to 5 percent of artwork in permanent museum collections around the world are works by women. Artist and advocate Kathrine Lemke Waste is out to change that statistic. “Museums are repositories of our cultural heritage,” says Lemke Waste, a leader in the “25 in 25” movement, a national push by the nonprofit American Women Artists to get more work by female artists into American museums over the next quarter century. “Generations to come will go to museums to see what was deemed important enough to be saved for future generations—and women artists’ point of view will not be represented,” she says. “That impact is huge. If little girls can’t see it, they can’t be it.” Lemke Waste was a girl of 7 or 8 when she first realized that painting was her preferred form of artistic expression. Following studies at the Rhode Island School of Design in the early 1980s, as well as what she describes as a “five-year apprenticeship” with Salvatore Casa—winner of the American Watercolor Society’s Gold Medal—Lemke Waste made a national name for herself as a Master Signature member of AWA (she also serves as the organization’s board president emeritus). The Land Park resident’s By Jessica Laskey work has been featured Open Studio in museum exhibitions
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Watercolors by Kathrine Lemke Waste.