Irene Below

In 1998, Below became involved against the name Richard Kaselowsky for the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, which is why the then director Thomas Kellein turned to the school board for support against this "teacher gone wild"..

She was and is involved in many socio-political activities; in the 1980s she was co-founder of a self-managed day-care centre with alternative pedagogy, and in 2017 of the self-help initiative "Wir für uns-anders Altern".

Below studied in Munich, Cologne and Berlin. From 1964 to 1967 she was a German Academic Exchange Service scholarship holder for Florence and was awarded a doctorate in 1971 with a dissertation on Leonardo da Vinci and Filippino Lippi. As early as 1972, at a congress of the Association of German Art Historians in Constance, Below suggested that the question of women in art history should be considered and thus initiated a discussion on the feminist perspective in art history. From 1974 to 2004, Below taught at the Bielefeld University, since 2007 as a lecturer at the University of Bielefeld in the Department of Art and Music. This is accompanied by freelance work as a curator and journalist. From 1995 until 1999, she undertook research trips to South Africa. In 2000, she was a founding member of frauenkunstforum-owl e. V. and 1987-1994 a spokesperson for the women's studies section in art studies in the Ulmer Verein - Verband für Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaften [de]. Since 1988, she has been the initiator of the Women's Forum in the BDK Fachverband für Kunstpädagogik [de].

Irene Below (born 1942) is a German woman art historian.

Her work focuses on the settlement of architecture of the 1920s, feminist art and cultural studies, female artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, periphery and centre in art, the art world and science, and studies on the exile of artists and scientists.