Tate artist in residence quits, claiming gallery is failing women

An artist has resigned from her position as an artist in residence at the Tate in protest at how she believes it and other arts institutions are failing women when it comes to combating sexual harassment and fostering diversity.

Liv Wynter, who chose to resign on the eve of International Women’s Day to maximise its impact and highlight the “invisible inequalities” at the Tate, was also angered by recent harassment comments from the British art institution’s director, Maria Balshaw.

Balshaw was reported in an interview with the Times last month to have said: “I personally have never suffered any such issues. Then, I wouldn’t. I was raised to be a confident woman who, when I encountered harassment, would say: ‘Please don’t’ ... or something rather more direct.”

In her resignation letter, Wynter said that Balshaw’s words had come as a “huge slap in the face” to her as a campaigner against cuts to domestic violence services and what she described as the “erasure” of women from the Tate.

Source: theguardian