UCL Art Museum celebrates forgotten women

A new exhibition at UCL Art Museum entitled Prize & Prejudice reveals how young female artists won all the prizes at the UCL Slade School of Fine Art in 1918, the year women won the vote, only for many of them to disappear from sight. Prize & Prejudice casts an unflinching eye at the successful art students the school has nurtured and raises questions over why they vanished from public record as the century progressed. The UCL Slade School has awarded prizes to its students annually since its establishment in 1871. In 1918, women swept the prizes in categories including Figure Drawing, Head Painting, and Figure Painting. Yet while few of these went on to successful careers in the arts, other men studying at the UCL Slade School around the same time did become successful. Among the artists in the exhibition are Alice Joyce Smith (b. 1896), who won the First Prize of £3 for Figure Drawing.