​HPR chats with Plains Art Museum curator Danielle Gravon

By Jacinta Zens

Being a full-time professional artist is an incredibly challenging career choice. For example, according to the Strategic National Arts Alumni Program, roughly 10% of art graduates earn their primary income as artists. As an artist and arts administrator myself, that statistic is a grim reminder of how optimistic artists are in art school, and how, after graduation, that optimism confronts the reality of limited opportunities in the arts and the unbelievably competitive industry as a whole.

As women artists, all the research indicates that our ability to become a full-time professional artist is much less likely than that of men. According to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, only 13.7% of living artists represented by galleries in Europe and North America are women. And of the 3,050 galleries in the Artsy database, 10% represent no women artists, while only 8% represent more women than men, and almost half represent 25% or fewer women.

So now you may think to yourself that maybe there are fewer female graduates of art programs, which is why so few women are given opportunities. The truth is, according to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, women earn 70% of Bachelor of Fine Arts and 65–75% of Master of Fine Arts degrees in the U.S. So women have the majority of art degrees, but have far less representation and opportunities.

All of this is why it was so exciting for me to learn that the Plains Art Museum is currently displaying an exhibit of women artists, and that the internationally praised feminist art collective, the Guerrilla Girls, will be giving a talk and hosting a hands-on workshop in January. To learn more about the Women Artists exhibit and Guerrilla Girl events, I spoke with Danielle Gravon, the Chief Curator at the Plains Art Museum.

HPR: Let's start with how the Women Artists exhibit came to be.

Danielle Gravon: So, Women Artists was already on the calendar. I inherited the exhibition. It is a traveling exhibition from the Reading Public Museum that was organized before I started.

The exhibit prompted some research into our own collection to see how many women artists there were. And it was 10%, which was kind of shocking because I thought maybe we had made some progress in the last 15, 20, or 30 years — but it was still 10%. From there, I decided to include some pieces from our collection alongside those from Reading.

Of the 40 I chose from our collection, 20 have never been on display before. So, okay, so not only are 10% of these objects made by women, but half of them have never even been shown, or the same pieces have tended to be shown. So, I thought, “Why don't we include these women artists from our collection?”

Another significant part of this exhibit is student contributions. And then the other part was I am trying to engage the universities a little bit more, because working in museums and having opportunities to work with the collections was really formative for me, and why I ultimately decided to choose a path in the arts.

I invited students from MSUM's Women in Art class, taught by Dr. Noni Brynjolson, to write extended labels for the exhibit. They wrote 22 of the texts for the objects in our collection. We're considering putting it in a booklet to make it part of the art history of women artists in our region. That's a really awesome partnership. It’s been a great collaboration!

HPR: I love that idea. Are you just working specifically with MSUM? Are you working with others?

DG: For this, it was just MSUM. I had reached out to Concordia and the other colleges as well, but they weren't offering women in art this semester.

HPR: How did you get to bring the Guerrilla Girls into the picture?

DG: They inspired the research on the collection back in the spring. One day, I thought, what if I invited the Guerrilla Girls? I wonder if they'd come to Fargo?

So, I just emailed them and asked them if they wanted to come to Fargo. I told them when we would have the exhibition and they said, “well, we've never been to North Dakota. We'd love to come.” Sometimes you just gotta ask.

They have a presentation on January 22, with VIP and general admission tickets available. The VIP experience is an opportunity to meet them in the gallery and have priority seating and food. The workshop is scheduled for the following day, and 40 spaces are available for public purchase.

HPR: What does the workshop entail?

DG: It's a two-hour workshop where they break people up into groups. The group's members come up with an idea, such as a protest poster in favor of a cause they've all agreed on. So, it's a very hands-on, community-oriented discussion-based workshop.

HPR: Thank you so much for doing all of this, because it means a lot to me personally, and a lot of women artists I know.

The Women Artists exhibit will be up until March 1, 2026. The Guerrilla Girls will have an artist talk on January 22, 2026, starting at 6:30 pm, with the VIP portion happening before the event. For more information and tickets, visit the Plains Art Museum’s website, plainsart.org. 

Contact High Plains Reader contributor Jacinta Zens at jacinta.zens@gmail.com.