Stolen Light (New Work in Progress)

Stolen Light is an ongoing body of work about women whose creative and intellectual contributions were obscured, diminished, appropriated, or absorbed into the reputations of the men around them.

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, women worked as writers, painters, photographers, composers, scientists, researchers, and inventors within cultures that often denied them equal access to education, professional institutions, publication, exhibition, and recognition. Their work frequently took place beside, or behind, the work of husbands, lovers, mentors, professors, and employers. Sometimes their contributions were simply overlooked. Sometimes they performed the invisible labor that made a man’s celebrated work possible. And in some of the most disturbing cases, their ideas or creations were published, exhibited, patented, or publicly claimed under a man’s name.

The stories vary. Colette’s early novels appeared under the name of her husband, Willy. Sculptor Camille Claudel worked for years in the orbit of Auguste Rodin, her remarkable work long interpreted through his. Painter Lee Krasner struggled for recognition independent of Jackson Pollock. Margaret Keane watched as her husband claimed authorship of paintings she had made. Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray research was critical to understanding the structure of DNA, yet the history of that discovery was for decades dominated by the men who received the Nobel Prize. These women are not exceptions so much as visible points within a much larger history.