Gender-Based Violence in French Art Schools and the Reproduction of Gender Inequality in Contemporary Art

In the past five years, the testimonies published on social media by ‘Balancetonecoledart’ (‘expose your art school’) and the ones that accompanied a manifesto ‘for a #Metoo of the art world’ called attention to the fact that art schools are one of the sites of gender-based violence in the contemporary art. Yet, contrary to gender-based violence in university and elite academic institutions, gender-based violence in artistic higher education remains largely under-documented. Based on the case of French schools of visual arts, this chapter studies the forms of gender-based violence experienced by female students, the social processes and relations that produce and silence them, and their consequences for women’s integration in the contemporary art world. It draws on qualitative data collected during two different fieldworks: interviews with around fifty graduates and six instructors of a prestigious French art school, an ethnography of its exam entrance; interviews with seven art schools’ instructors, four members of feminist collectives fighting gender-based violence in higher artistic education, two workers in the ministry of Culture, and documents produced by feminist collectives. This case study reveals that gender-based violence does not disappear in contexts where women are a majority. Overall, the chapter emphasises how gender-based violence in artistic education constrains women’s creative abilities and access to professional norms and networks, and thus contributes to perpetuate gender segregation in contemporary art.