How Can the Art World Better Support Women Artists?

For years, the art world has been having the same conversation.

Women artists are underrepresented in museum collections. Their work is often valued less in the market. Their careers are more likely to be interrupted, overlooked, or recognised later than those of their male peers.

Then a new report appears. A museum announces a major retrospective. An auction record is broken. A previously overlooked artist is “rediscovered”.

The moment is celebrated as progress.

But the more difficult question is: why did recognition take so long in the first place?

This question sits at the centre of a recent Artsy discussion on how the art world can better support women artists. The conversation is particularly relevant because, despite visible progress, structural inequality has not disappeared. Women artists accounted for only 11% of museum acquisitions between 2008 and 2023, while research suggests that parity in auction sales may not be reached until 2053. (Artsy)

The issue, therefore, is not whether the art world has begun to support women artists.

It has.

The issue is whether it is changing quickly enough, and whether the changes are deep enough to last.

Artist Portia Roy

Progress Should Not Depend on More “Firsts”

One of the most important points raised in the Artsy discussion is the problem with treating overdue recognition as progress.

A woman artist receives her first major museum retrospective at 80 or 90. A museum acquires the work of a woman artist for the first time. An institution announces its first exhibition dedicated to women artists.

These moments matter. But they also reveal how long the system took to recognise artists who should have been part of the conversation much earlier.

This is particularly visible in the careers of artists such as Joan Semmel and Samia Halaby, who have received major institutional attention only after decades of practice.

Their recognition is important, but it also raises an uncomfortable question: how many other artists are still waiting? (Artsy)

A more equitable art world should not keep celebrating the same kinds of “firsts”.

It should create systems in which recognition does not arrive only after an artist has spent most of her career waiting for it.

The Idea of “Quality” Needs to Be Questioned

One of the most persistent arguments used to explain the underrepresentation of women artists is that the market or institutions are simply responding to quality.

The problem is that “quality” is not always as objective as the art world likes to believe.

Research by economist Renée B. Adams has found that paintings by women artists sell at a significant discount at auction, and experiments have shown that viewers can evaluate identical works differently when they are told the artist is a woman. This suggests that the question is not always whether women artists produce work of lower quality, but how assumptions about the artist influence the way the work is received. (Artsy)

This matters because ideas about quality shape almost every stage of an artist’s career.

They influence who receives gallery representation, who is invited to exhibit, who is acquired by museums, who is written about, and whose work is considered historically important.

When the same standards are applied unevenly, simply telling women artists to “work harder” cannot solve the problem.

The standards themselves need to be examined.

Artist Sheli Gupta

Changing the Narrative Means Changing More Than Exhibition Lists

Representation is often measured through numbers.

How many women artists are in a museum collection? How many have solo exhibitions? How many are represented by galleries?

These numbers matter, but they do not tell the entire story.

The way an artist is written about also shapes how her work is remembered.

Women artists are frequently interpreted through gendered frameworks. A painting about domestic space may be read as a feminist statement when a male artist working with similar subjects may simply be discussed in terms of composition, form, or art history.

This is why changing the narrative is so important.

The question is not only whether women artists are included. It is also how they are understood.

Are they being treated as artists whose work can engage with every subject? Or are they being placed into narrow categories that limit how their practices are interpreted?

The distinction matters.

An artist should not have to make work explicitly about gender to be taken seriously as a woman artist.

Collectors Have More Influence Than They May Realise

Collectors often think of their purchases as private decisions.

They choose what they want to live with, what they can afford, and what interests them.

But collectively, these decisions influence the future of the art world.

Museum collections depend significantly on donations and gifts from collectors. This means that what collectors acquire today can influence what institutions are able to exhibit, study, and preserve tomorrow. (Artsy)

This gives collecting a broader cultural responsibility. It does not mean that collectors should buy work because an artist is a woman. Artistic quality and personal connection remain essential.

It does mean that collectors should question the habits that shape their choices.

• Whose work do they encounter most often?

• Which artists are repeatedly recommended to them?

• Are they looking only at artists who have already been validated by the market?

  
  

A collection can become a form of cultural participation.

It can support artists who are still building their careers, contribute to a more diverse art history, and create opportunities for artists whose work may not yet have received widespread institutional recognition.

Buying the Work Is Not Enough

This is perhaps one of the most important points.

An artwork can be acquired and still remain invisible.

A museum can buy work by women artists and keep it in storage. A collector can purchase work by an emerging artist without ever engaging with the wider practice. A gallery can represent women artists without providing the long-term support needed to sustain their careers.

Visibility without continuity is fragile.

The latest Art Basel and UBS data shows meaningful progress in representation. Women accounted for 45% of artists represented across dealers in 2025, up from 35% in 2018, while primary-market galleries reached parity in representation. However, works by women artists still accounted for only 37% of sales by value across all dealers. (Art Basel)

The gap between representation and financial outcomes is important.

It suggests that including women artists is not enough. The market also needs to create the conditions for their work to be valued, collected, exhibited, and supported over time.

What Does This Mean for South Asian Women Artists?

For South Asian women artists, these questions carry another layer of complexity.

Gender does not operate separately from geography, class, language, caste, ethnicity, access, or the historical structures that determine whose work enters the international art world.

An artist from a major metropolitan centre may have access to networks and institutions that remain unavailable to an artist working elsewhere.

A woman artist may be making significant work but lack access to professional guidance, collectors, curators, or platforms through which the practice can be encountered.

This is why conversations about representation need to move beyond simply counting women artists.

The question should also be:

Which women artists are being seen?

And:

Which voices are still missing?

At Artlune, this is part of the reason we focus on building greater visibility and access for emerging and mid-career South Asian artists. We work with artists across different practices and backgrounds, creating opportunities through exhibitions, artist development, advisory, community programmes, and collector engagement.

For us, supporting women artists cannot be limited to featuring them in a campaign or exhibition.

It has to involve creating longer-term relationships with their practices.

Support Needs to Become Structural

The art world does not need another moment of symbolic support that disappears when the conversation moves on.

It needs sustained action.

Museums need to examine their acquisition and exhibition histories. Galleries need to think about long-term career development rather than short-term representation.

Collectors need to consider how their purchasing decisions shape the wider ecosystem. Curators and writers need to question the frameworks through which artists are interpreted.

And all of these changes need to be measured over time.

The progress is real. Women artists now have greater visibility in many parts of the art world, and market representation has improved considerably over the past decade. But progress should not become an excuse to stop asking difficult questions. (Art Basel)

The goal should not be to create more exceptional women artists who manage to overcome an unequal system.

The goal should be to create a system that does not require women artists to overcome the same barriers repeatedly.

Because the real measure of change is not how many women artists the art world can celebrate after decades of neglect. It is whether the next generation has to wait that long at all.

References

• Artsy, “5 Ways the Art World Can Better Support Women Artists.” (Artsy)

• Art Basel and UBS, The Art Market Report 2026. (Art Basel)

• Artsy, The Women Artists Market Report 2024. (Artsy)

• Art Basel, “Are Women Artists Finally Getting Their Due?” (Art Basel)

• Wang, X., Gates, A. J., Resch, M., and Barabási, A.-L., “Quantifying Institutional Gender Inequality in Contemporary Visual Art.” (arXiv)

• Artsy, “5 Gallerists on What It Means to Support Women Artists Today.” (Artsy)