Why ‘Muse’ Is A Four-Letter Word In Art History

Author Lori Zimmer considers “muse” a four-letter word.

She would know.

Zimmer’s partner, Logan Hicks, is a prominent artist. Over the decade the two have been together, Zimmer has been referred to by the “m” word more than once.

“It happened to me last week,” Zimmer told Forbes.com in an interview conducted February 3, 2025.

Zimmer and Hicks were in Miami where Hicks was doing advance work for an upcoming gallery show. Instead of questioning Hicks about logistics and preparations, the gallerist–a woman–badgered Zimmer about the details. Details she had no knowledge of.

“So many times I said to her, ‘I’m a writer. I do this for a living.’ Even when you say that, she didn’t believe me because my boyfriend is an artist,” Zimmer said. “I’m telling this woman about this book, I had the one copy in my hand, no matter what I said, she didn’t hear what I do, she only saw me in that (muse) role.”

The irony of ironies being the book Zimmer was holding in her hand, the one she was telling the gallerist about, centers on female creatives from history marginalized to the “muse” role. “I’m Not Your Muse: Uncovering the Overshadowed Brilliance of Women Artists & Visionaries,” available February 25, 2025, stands up for women whose contribution to the arts have long been overlooked.

Zimmer doesn’t mind being thought of as inspiring or supportive of Hicks’ career–she has done both, as he has for her–what she bristles at is being thought of only as muse. The college degrees erased. The time spent working in galleries, curating shows, writing articles erased. The five books she’s authored erased.

“This book isn’t about that men suck–even a woman was doing that to me–it’s about that we’re all trained to think this way,” Zimmer said. “It’s super frustrating, it happens to me, people are surprised when they find out I have a career. What do you think I do? I live in New York. I’m not a housewife, we’re not rich.”

‘I’m Not Your Muse’

The women Zimmer profiles in her book were forces in the fields of dance (Maria Tallchief; 1925-2013), performance art (Loie Fuller; 1862-1928), painting (Remedios Varo; 1908-1963), sculpture (Edmonia Lewis; 1844-1907), and film (Alice Guy-Blaché; 1873-1968) to give a partial list. All of them, even the relatively famous like writer Alice B. Toklas (1877-1967) or Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington (1917-2011), have had their contributions diminished by history.

“History is curated,” Zimmer said. “Part of advocating for equality is to remember our history and learn our history. It’s important to learn about the women that came before us.”

Just because the women Zimmer profiles were overlooked or forgotten, doesn’t mean they should stay that way.

Take Tiffany glass designer Clara Driscoll (1861–1944). Art history is just now starting to fully grasp and acknowledge her monumental influence over the Tiffany aesthetic the world fell in love with. Begrudgingly, in some quarters.

“One of those galleries on Park Avenue that’s extremely expensive, they had this huge, gorgeous (Tiffany) show, and I mentioned I was in the thick of researching (Driscoll for the book); it was a great coincidence. (A gallerist) was talking to different people, so I interjected, ‘I see these three are designed by Clara Driscoll, but it’s not mentioned anywhere,’” Zimmer remembers of another “I’m Not Your Muse” moment in the wild. “(The gallerist said), ‘Well, we talk about her on the website.’ I looked on the website and it was mentioned in a blog post three years prior, but he shut me down immediately because that’s not the Tiffany name and he saw it as less valuable.”

Louis Comfort Tiffany artwork brings a bigger commission than Clara Driscoll artwork, even if Tiffany didn’t design the piece and Driscoll did. In the art world, never let the facts get in the way of a good story… or big sale.

Zimmer had been cataloguing “muse” stories for years. The one that pushed her over the edge to commit to the book came from her hometown of Buffalo.

“The University of Buffalo had a show on Louise Blanchard Bethune (1856–1913), who’s the first person in the book,” Zimmer explained. “She’s the first licensed female architect in the United States, and she’s from Buffalo, and I never knew. I grew up there. She designed (the Hotel Lafayette). I’ve gone to that hotel a million times. I used to go to raves in the basement, and yet, not one teacher thought to tell their class (about her) when we were learning about and talking about architecture.”

Researching Bethune, Zimmer came across a small New York Times article announcing the Hotel Lafayette’s 1904 opening.

“It mentions every person except (except Bethune),” Zimmer said. “It mentions the construction company. It mentions the men renting out the seventh floor. It mentions this, this and this, except not the architect; that’s unheard of when you’re talking about a building!”

Zimmer and her long-time friend and “I’m Not Your Muse” illustrator Maria Krasinski will be at Rizzoli bookstore (1133 Broadway) in New York for a talk and signing on February 25th, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. Free with RSVP. The two will also appear at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum on the evening of March 7th as part of the free First Friday series. No RSVP required. Lastly, they’ll take part in a happy hour dance party and book launch on March 21st from 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM Friends and Lovers (641 Classon Ave) in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, also free to attend with no RSVP required.

31 Women

“I’m Not Your Muse” highlights 31 women from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. That number pays homage to the 1943 “Exhibition by 31 Women” at Peggy Guggenheim’s famed Art of This Century Gallery at 30 West 57th Street in New York. The show is considered the first to feature exclusively female artists.

As Zimmer notes in her book, a Time magazine writer refused to review the exhibition believing “there were no worthy women artists.” Guggenheim disagreed and featured Carrington, Leonor Fini, Frida Kahlo, Gypsy Rose Lee, Louise Nevelson, Meret Oppenheim, Hedda Stern, and Dorothea Tanning among others.

Jenna Segal, a film, television and Tony Award winning theater producer and philanthropist has brought the band back together, so to speak. What began as a research exercise during the pandemic blossomed into a full-blown obsession and quest to acquire one work by each artist in the “31 Women” show.

Segal went to auction houses, private collectors and even descendants of the artists to reunite the women into one collection. Her collection. A collection that has now grown to include several hundred works of art and ephemera by all of the 31 women, along with a library of scholarship.

From February 27 through June 29, 2025, an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art–MAC/CCB in Lisbon, Portugal puts the 31 women back on view together again with artworks drawn from Segal’s collection.

Sally Michel

Sally Michel (1902–2003) would have fit right in with the women in Zimmer’s book or Guggenheim’s exhibition. An exceptional painter in her own right, Michel saw her primary role as being the greatest champion of her husband’s work. That would be Milton Avery (1885–1965).

An exhibition on view at the Morris Museum in Morris Township, New Jersey through May 4, 2025, brings Michel out of the “muse” shadow and into the light, presenting over 40 paintings created between the 1930s and the 1990s, showcasing her distinctive use of color, abstraction, and form.

The unique style developed by Michel and Avery emerged from New York’s art scene of the Great Depression. Variously called Realist-Abstraction or Color Field Realism, their idiosyncratic look combined a fidelity to the observed world with geometric simplicity as they painted everyday vignettes of people and nature in unexpected swaths of vivid color.

Michel worked through the 1940s as a commercial artist to support her family, proving the “muse” typically does more to support the artist than lounge about in robes on couches. The muse often pays the bills.

All the while—from the moment of their first meeting in Gloucester, MA during the summer of 1924 and through their four decades of marriage—they painted together and thought critically about the art of their time amid an incredible circle of friends such as Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, and Barnet Newman. Their shared approach to art underpinned Michel’s work through a very active period that stretched into the 1990s.

“The very concept of a muse underestimates these women and their abilities,” Zimmer writes in “I’m Not Your Muse.” “At its root, muse is a supporting role, the title a consolation price that claims to recognize a woman’s greatness–but only in how she feeds the energy of another.”

Michel, Zimmer, Driscoll, Bethune, the “31” artists, the “Muse” book subjects, they are no consolation prize, they are the grand prize.

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