Giovanna, you wrote the preface to the recently published French translation of Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock’s 1981 book Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology. In it, they addressed the question posed by art critic and curator Linda Nochlin in the title of her 1971 essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Except, in their response, they flipped the premise. Women artists, they insisted, had always been there. What had been missing was… Read the full article here.

 

This conversation between Giovanna Zapperi (Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of Geneva) and Élisabeth Jobin (Curator at the MAMCO and curator of the exhibition) is excerpted from MAMCO JOURNAL #16, published in June 2026. You can access all previous issues in digital format on our website by following this link. To receive future issues free of charge, send your postal address to journal@mamco.ch.