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Can You Name 5 Women Artists?

Four months ago, Doris Cacoilo, professor of a History of Art and Women course, asked her students to name 5 female artists on the first day of class. And no, Beyonce wasn’t the type of answer she was looking for. Automatically the class was speechless with this challenging task given. Majority of the students were only able to name famous male artists such as: Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh, and Pablo Picasso. To simply name five female artists felt like mission impossible. This issue, i believe, roots from the corrupted systems of middle schools and high schools, where Picasso and da Vinci were two of the few artists we were exposed to and they just so happened to be male artists.  I’ve come to the conclusion that one can learn a lot within the time span of 4 months. In less than four months, Professor Cacoilo was easily able to reach the course objective for students, which was to “ identify major women artists, their works, and their stylistic characteristics in different periods.” Early in the semester,