Lady Sheila Cruthers
Lady Sheila Cruthers
Shelia Foundation is named in honour of Lady Sheila Cruthers, a tireless advocate for women artists who built the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art into Australia’s largest standalone collection of women’s art.
1925
Sheila started life as Sheila Della Vedova in 1925, the ninth child of Italian migrants. She left school at 14 and quickly rose to become legal secretary to Lawrence, later Chief Justice Sir Lawrence Jackson. In 1950 she married young journalist Jim Cruthers and together they created a strong partnership in which Jim forged a career as a media executive who, for his working life, had Sheila as a sounding board.
Jim and Sheila Cruthers in St Georges Terrace, Perth, early 1950s.
1970
Sheila discovered art in the early 1970’s when she began visiting Perth galleries with her son John. From her first purchase in 1974, she collected art by women – drawn to the young women she saw staring out of their modernist self-portraits, possibly reminded of the plucky young woman she was as she embarked on a career. Sheila gradually built a unique collection, aided by her keen eye and a willingness both to purchase works by relatively unknown artists, and to commission new works.
1980
While living in New York in the 1980’s, Sheila provided a home away from home for women artists visiting from Australia. She also began AustArt, a group that raised money for American museums to purchase Australian works and she invited Americans to view artworks she had brought with her. In particular she highlighted a section of the Cruthers Collection she called “the artist and her work”: pictures paired with self-portraits. The Collection, already well-known in Australia, began to acquire international recognition.
1995
After returning to Perth, Sheila continued to build her collection in a more focused way. In 1995 it was shown publicly for the first time in the exhibition In the Company of Women – 100 years of Australian Women’s Art from the Cruthers Collection, which ran at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts as part of the National Women’s Art Exhibition.
1997
“The Archbishop and the naked lady” read the headline in The West Australian as Sheila’s collection was displayed in Archbishop Peter Carnley’s residence to raise money for breast cancer research in 1997. Photograph Barry Baker, courtesy The West Australian.
“The Archbishop and the naked lady” read the headline in The West Australian as Sheila’s collection was displayed in Archbishop Peter Carnley’s residence to raise money for breast cancer research in 1997. Photograph Barry Baker, courtesy The West Australian.
2001
From this point, Sheila began to explore ways she could share her collection with the public and also began to gain recognition for her collecting. In early 2001 she gave the keynote address at Modern Australian Women 1925-1945, the first museum exhibition of Australian women’s art at the Art Gallery of South Australia. In 2005 she was recognised in her own right with a Chancellor’s Medal from The University of Western Australia for her contribution to women’s art.
2007
In 2007 Sheila and her family realised their desire to share the Collection with the public by gifting it to The University of Western Australia, where it now resides at Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery. This allowed Sheila (by then 82 years old) to take a back seat, leaving a family foundation to continue her good work. She passed away only months before the opening of Look. Look Again, the first major exhibition of the Collection at the University, and the publication of the collection book Into the Light.
Sheila and Jim Cruthers at the celebration of their donation of the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art to The University of Western Australia, 2008.
2017
Sheila Foundation was created with the intent to harness Sheila’s incredible spirit, love of art and desire to support female Australian artists. Her work and passion are the cornerstone for all the Foundation does and the inspiration for its future endeavours.