On Art and Gender

Recently Lance Armstrong has been staging a sort of traveling Art show to raise awareness and dollars for his Livestrong charity. Below is picture taken for the recent NYC iteration of the show @ Deitch Projects in SoHo...

Notice anything, other than the guy to Lance's right who might actually be as tall as me, that is. Let me give you a hint, She's the only one in heels. Yep, that's Rosson Crow. A recent Yale MFA grad (as well a one hell of a painter) and also the only female in the group. Now for those that are foreign to the art world you might not even notice this but as someone currently enrolled in a graduate art program I find it blinding. Their are 19 people in my program, 5 of them are men. However if the numbers suggest anything it is that in all likelihood more of those five guys will obtain gallery representation when they graduate than the women will. Let me put it this way. Imagine their are 100 graduating seniors at a public high school somewhere in America, now imagine that 75 are girls and 25 are guys; now imagine that every guy in the class is accepted to college and one girl is. Do you think that might raise some eyebrows. That's exactly what is going on here. This is not a question of fair or unfair, this is a question of blatant gender bias. Their are today, across the board more women applying to, attending and graduating from TOP Graduate fine art programs across the country than their are men but an inverse proportion of them will actually have successful careers in art. Their is no mathematical explanation for this other than bias on the part of the people who organize the shows and bias in this day and age is wrong, the art world is better than this.