Pioneering Women Research Curator Rosamund Lily West at the Royal Society of Sculptors shares the story of Julian Phelps Allan, an artist whose life has been illuminated by the Pioneering Women research project, which uncovers the lives, careers, and legacies of the Society’s female members.
In February 1923, meeting minutes from the Royal Society of Sculptors record that Frederick William Pomeroy FRBS suggested that ‘members might approach some lady Sculptors of outstanding ability in order to forward the interests of the Society’. Female sculptors have been members since the early 1920s, and a two-year project – Pioneering Women – is now underway to study the lives, histories, and legacies of some twentyfive women who joined the Society in the early to mid-twentieth century. Drawing on the uncatalogued archive of the Society, it is possible to reveal how these women worked, how they sought and attracted commissions, and how they negotiated being professional sculptors in a traditionally male profession. Beyond purely institutional matters, the archive details everything from the commissioning of war memorials to discussions on the exhibition and display of sculpture. It also contains valuable membership files where artists were invited to deposit their own slides and photographs.
October 2019 — No. 13
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