why there have been no great female artists

Compared to their male peers, female artists remain underrepresented in museum collections, account for fewer exhibitions and fetch significantly less money at auction.

But gender equality in the art world remains a largely unattained goal. Important recent milestones - like the late Swedish abstract painter Hilma Af Klint’s (1862–1944) Guggenheim retrospective, in 2019, which sold more tickets and catalogues than any other exhibition at that museum - point to cracks in the glass ceiling. Top: South African artist Esther Mahlangu’s 2021 Ndebele Abstract (art © and courtesy the artist and the Melrose Gallery) Included in its pages are the late-18th-century French portraitist and miniaturist Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, represented at left by a 1785 self-portrait with two of her students (image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art / © the artist), and contemporary Kenyan talent Wangari Mathenge, whose 2021 oil on canvas The Ascendants XVII (art courtesy of Pippy Houldsworth Gallery / © the artist / photo by Brian Griffin ) is seen at right. The new Phaidon volume Great Women Painters, assembled by writer and curator Allison Gingeras, features works by 300 female artists - both celebrated and lesser known - who worked from the Renaissance through the present day and lived around the world.

October 9, 2022In the half-century since art historian Linda Nochlin penned the influential 1971 essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” - which condemned institutions for long preventing women from achieving critical and financial success as artists - curators, critics and collectors have worked to raise, relaunch and rediscover the careers of female creators.

Why there have been no great female artists