Grace Linton Battle

This is the story of a woman who grew up during the Great Depression and World War II, when food and other resources were scarce and married women’s roles were largely focused on raising the children and taking care of the home.

As an adult, Grace Linton Battle came into her own and broke out of expected societal shells. Her interests and hobbies expanded from household duties into collecting and investing.

As a collector, GLB taught herself about the objects that appealed to her: mainly antique furniture and Oriental ceramics. She read about them, asked questions, and considered the value and joy of a prospective investment. She was never afraid to ask antique dealers and vendors about what they were selling and why it was a good value.

Grace never had her own job or salary, but with a tiny grocery stipend from her husband to feed three children, she cleverly divided that stipend to squirrel as many dollars as she could toward buying art, decorative items and antique furniture on layaway… usually a couple of dollars at a time. 

Grace also taught herself about investing in the stock market. She studied stocks the way she did antiques: by asking questions and reading. Grace would buy a small number of shares of stock and then let the dividends reinvest so that they grew over time. She loved a good bargain, and that held true whether she invested in a stock or a side table. 

When Grace passed away, the gifts for her children and grandchildren were those she had either collected or grown on her own over the past sixty years. The Grace Linton Battle Memorial Fund for the Arts is her family’s way of repaying and carrying on her legacy. 

Rather than investing in stocks and antiques, we are interested in investing in the future of young, emerging woman-identifying artists and curators.

Why Contemporary Woman Artists? 

Grace was many things: we remember her most as a mother and grandmother. Other strong bonds with her eldest daughter, Anne Battle, and her granddaughter, Marta Staudinger, were connected through a common interest and enjoyment in collecting art, decorative and furniture items. Anne has continued her interest in the arts as an art collector with her husband and her service on the VMFA Foundation Board of Directors. Their art collection includes substantive acquisitions of emerging and established Richmond artists. Marta is an advocate of the local arts in the greater Washington DC area through her art consultancy business Latela Curatorial and as an established woman artist.

“What is important is that Grace influenced us all through her eye and ambitious self-born interest to collect and invest. We believe we are stewards of her gifts to us.” – Anne Battle & Marta Staudinger  

Facts: The Underrepresentation of Women in the Arts

The GLB Memorial Fund supports the efforts of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Their website keeps an updated log of the underrepresentation of Women in the Arts divided in categories: Demographics & Compensation; Museums & Galleries; Leadership; The Art Market; and Art Shows, Awards & Publications. We encourage you to become involved.

• More than $196.6 billion has been spent on art at auction between 2008 and the first half of 2019. Of this, work made by women accounts for just $4 billion—around 2%. (artnet News)

• Nearly half (45.8%) of visual artists in the United States are women; on average, they earn 74¢ for every dollar made by male artists. (National Endowment for the Arts) 

• Women working across arts professions make almost $20,000 less per year than men. (Artsy)