Female Voices in Art: Catriona McAra, Art Historian and Curator
“I try to lift the next generation up as well as celebrating the mid-career moment and the achievements of older artists”
Catriona McAra (b. 1985, Edinburgh, UK) is an art historian and curator. She studied for her PhD at University of Glasgow and post-doc at University of Edinburgh. Following a career path in the senior management of university collections in Leeds College of Art and University of St Andrews, she is now a lecturer in art history and honorary curatorial fellow at the University of Aberdeen. She has written a range of catalogue essays and interpretation texts for commercial galleries and public museums. Catriona is author of A Surrealist Stratigraphy of Dorothea Tanning’s Chasm (Routledge, 2017) and The Medium of Leonora Carrington (Manchester University Press, 2022), projects which took her to Arizona and Mexico. She is writing a third book on artist-women working in Scotland.
What did you enjoy about being a part of this project?
I love Carla’s work and have known about this project for while, so am very honoured to be included alongside so many creative women I admire (e.g. Gráinne Rice looks stellar in her portrait!). Getting to pose with my books outside the National Library of Scotland felt pretty special too.
Do you have a favourite artist?
Chardin, Morandi and O'Keeffe. I also deeply admire Michelle Williams Gamaker's activist approach to art-making. And Mieke Bal.
What is your earliest memory involving art?
My parents took my sister and I to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Mod One) every Saturday as a child. I saw Alison Watt's solo show Shift when I was about 15 which clarified my direction. It was pretty special as I am now writing about her paintings 25 years later.
Do you have any special thoughts about the position of women in the art world?
I've thought about this a lot. I went to a women's leadership event in London in 2018 and was made to feel like I had gone to the wrong floor. I was informed that I "looked young" (by which they meant too young, threatened rather than "wow, you must be brilliant! Please join us and let us work out how we can help each other") which made me realise how far we still have to go in terms of accepting the potential of different paths, appearances and experiences. Feminism is a long-term project. I try to lift the next generation up as well as celebrating the mid-career moment and the achievements of older artists.
What are you wearing, and is there a story behind it?
A Boden cardigan. I mostly wear monochrome but, when the occasion demands it, I also like wearing suffragette colours - purple is for dignity. I was speaking at the conference of the Scottish Society for Art History that day, so it's statement dressing.
What are you currently working on?
My third book with Edinburgh University Press which is about Scottish women artists. My wonderful publisher, Carol MacDonald, was at the conference as well, which feels very sisterly and super supportive.
Could you mention a project, an institution that, or a person who has been important or inspiring for your career and why?
My mother, Lesley McAra, is a powerhouse - first woman to be Dean of Law at Edinburgh University and someone who fights for juvenile justice and rehabilitation. She lives her politics. I didn't initially plan to follow her into academia but she convinced me I could do this. We've co-written together for the Dangerous Women project (2016) and would like to do more of this.
