Christa Zaat is rewriting art history for female artists

At the weekend I came across Christa Zaat for the first time - and found out how she was building a huge resource about Female Artists in History as a Facebook Page - which has 91,000 followers and a very high rating of 4.9 out of 5 by those who have reviewed the page.

Female Artists in History Facebook Page - with the wonderful painting by Rosa Bonheur as the banner 

She had shared an image relating to Maria Sibylla Merian the 17th century entymologist and botanical artist- and I commented that I had a major profile / resource page about her  (see About Maria Sibylla Merian)

Her response was that I was doing for my area (botanical art) what she was trying to do for female artists in history!

Christa Zaat

I then started to

• study her Facebook Page for Female Artists in History https://www.facebook.com/female.artists.in.history
• read her story (in this interview Rewriting History with Christa Zaat) and 
• discovered her project (she's the Cofounder and Virtual Curator) on Researchgate

The aim of this project is to give a voice to those female artists, that can't speak for themselves anymore. With this project I hope to get an extensive insight in how many female artists we have had in the past, which works they created, with who they collaborated, etc.

The introduction explains that the project is actually a joint project - and it's not just Christa on her own. Also how the resources is much more than just the very frequent posts about female artists. Check out the photo albums!

For the people who don't know the curators behind this page, we are Christa Zaat and Carel Ronk, living in The Netherlands.
We started this page on 20 April 2014, wanting to show the world all the talented and skilled women artists we hadn't heard about at school, but were certainly there. In 2015, we became a non profit foundation [Stichting Female Artist in History]
Since the beginning, we've been posting nearly 7000 posts per year. Each woman gets her own album, and in this moment we have nearly 2000 albums!. Over 4000 names are still waiting to be researched and added! So we have more than enough work for the next decade.

It's a really admirable project - and I'm amazed that it's taken me so long to come across it - but I shall now be a regular follower.

I've tried to do my own bit to raise awareness of women artists in history - but this endeavour by Christa is something else again.

I very much recommend all those interested in the art created by female artists in the past to read the interview on Rewriting History (see above link) and sign up to follow this Facebook Page.