International Women’s Day was Wednesday, and in the spirit of celebrating the success of women across the globe, a panel of six prominent women in the arts at Iowa State gathered to discuss the current climate of women in the arts.

The classroom in Morrill Hall was packed full as the panel, hosted by University Museums Director Lynette Pohlman, answered questions from the audience. The panel included Tin-Shi Tam, Jane Cox, Ingrid Lilligren, Letitia Kenemer and Deb Marquart.

Each panel member began by discussing their path to Iowa State in the arts and a proud moment in their life. The women each represented different areas in art, ranging from theater, music, writing and visual arts.

A student in the audience posed the first question to the group, asking if they believe that President Steven Leath and the university as a whole endorses the arts on campus as much as they could.

“I always think there is more opportunity for supporting the arts,” Marquart said.

This sentiment was echoed by the entire panel. Lilligren, Pohlman and Kenemer also emphasized the importance of students driving arts endorsement in order for any progress to occur.

“I am looking for students in the community to participate with the arts. That has power to bring in resources,” Pohlman said.

A focus of the panel was the importance of women’s role in the arts, and one student asked how women in the arts can better support one another. As it turned out, there was an example of this on the panel.

Lilligren has an ongoing art exhibit that uses braille to express various other art and ideas. Marquart shared that a few years ago, Lilligren asked her for some poetry that Marquart had written and displayed select lines in braille for her exhibit.

“It’s so insipring to watch how Ingrid pursues her art, and it’s incredible to walk into a museum and see your poem set in braille,” Marquart said.

Experiences such as this showed the audience real examples of how women can, and do, help one another in the art world. Cox, who works in theater at Iowa State, shared how whenever a play is written, the team writing it makes sure to give strong roles to women.

“We’ve made a huge effort also to support women students who wants to become directors, a very hard field to get into for women, so we try to give them as much push as we can. … We try really hard to find support for women students in our program,” Cox said. 

Most of the women on the panel as roles as teachers at Iowa State and also engage in their own independent art as well. They were asked how those two roles interact with one another.

“Rather than, this is my job and this is what I do outside of my job, it’s all mingled, so I don’t know how to separate the two in the arts,” Kenemer said.

Marquart also expressed how the role as a teacher can help her learn new ideas and experiences as much as she is teaching students. She said that when her students are writing and working on something completely different than her “certain ideas resonate,” and she may get new ideas to inspire her in many ways.

As a whole, the art community must support itself as well, many panel members said. 

“Conversations between the various sections of art are important,” Pohlman said.

To end the discussion, Marquart read a poem by Lucille Clifton “for all the women, International Women’s Day.”

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“I am looking for students in the community to participate with the arts. That has power to bring in resources,” said Lynette Pohlman, University Museums Director.