Data Investigation · US Art Museums · 2026

Un-seen.

Women make up nearly half of all working artists in the United States. Walk the halls of America's major art museums, and you'll find a very different story hanging on the walls.

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Women in MoMA's permanent collection

13%

of works in MoMA's permanent collection of 140,848 artworks are by women

The Experience

Walk through any major American art museum. The pink light is hers. Everything else belongs to men.

13%

of permanent collection works
at MoMA are by women — 18,828 of 140,848

Work by a woman Work by a man

01 — The Collection

The numbers on the wall

MoMA's open collection dataset — 140,848 works — tells a story of persistent imbalance. The results are consistent, systemic, and frankly hard to read in 2026.

13.4%

of MoMA's 140,848-work collection are by women — 18,828 works

MoMA Open Collection Dataset · artworks.csv

How MoMA compares to other institutions

Tate Collection (UK)

Tate open data — 69,000+ works analysed directly

4.1%

18 major US museums (average)

Topaz et al., PLOS ONE 2019 — permanent collection study

12.6%

MoMA — this dataset

MoMA open data — 140,848 works analysed directly

13.4%

0.5%

of acquisitions across 31 major US museums (2008–2020) were works by Black American women. Of total auction sales in the same period: 0.1%. Not a rounding error.

Burns Halperin Report 2022

02 — What You Actually See

Imagine a museum wall

MoMA's permanent collection is 75% male-attributed and 13% female-attributed — the remaining works are collaborations or unknown. This is what that looks like.

Permanent Collection · MoMA

Male artists (86.6%) Female artists (13.4%)

Patterns in the Collection

What the data reveals

Three lenses on the same structural inequality — artwork scale, acquisition source, and historical shift across eight decades of MoMA collecting.

Artwork size by gender

Each rectangle represents one work's physical dimensions, anchored at the origin. Both male and female artists create large-format works — but who gets acquired at every scale remains deeply unequal. Data: works with recorded dimensions in MoMA's collection (under 300 cm).

Female artistsMale artists

Given vs. Purchased

In MoMA's collection, works by women are gifted to the institution far more often than they are purchased. Men are purchased at nearly equal rates to gifts — institutions actively invest in them. Data from MoMA's open collection (140,848 works).

FemaleMale

Progress, measured in busts

Each figure below represents one acquisition out of the total for that decade at MoMA. A woman-shaped bust is a work by a female artist. Look how much has changed — and how much still hasn't.

03 — The Leaky Pipeline

She earned that degree.

Women dominate art education. Then, at every subsequent rung of the career ladder, the numbers collapse.

"Women earn 70% of art degrees in the US — and represent 13% of what museums choose to collect."

Sources: NEA; NMWA Get the Facts; Burns Halperin Report 2022

04 — The Price of Being a Woman

One man. All women.

Between 2008 and 2022, Pablo Picasso alone generated $6.23 billion at auction. Art by all women artists combined generated $6.2 billion in the same period. One. Guy.

Pablo Picasso · alone

$6.23B

One man

Auction sales, 2008–2022

vs.

All women artists · combined

$6.2B

All women artists combined

Auction sales, 2008–2022

42%

automatic discount applied to paintings by women at auction, unconditionally

Adams et al., "Gendered Prices"

9.3%

share of total auction sales in 2022 were works by women

Artsy 2023

80¢

earned by women artists for every $1 made by male counterparts

National Endowment for the Arts

05 — The Long Wait

Mark your calendar.

At the current rate of change, gender parity in the auction market won't arrive until 2053. That's 27 more years. We suggest not holding your breath.

You are here

Gender parity

2008 2020 2026 2040 2053

1989

Guerrilla Girls' Met Museum audit: <5% of modern art by women, 85% of nude subjects female. Their poster still hangs. The numbers barely moved.

13.7%

of living artists at galleries in Europe and North America are women

47.6%

of US museums run by women — mainly those with the smallest budgets

2053

projected year of auction market parity at current rate of change

06 — But There Is Hope

Progress is possible.

In 2019 the Venice Biennale achieved gender parity for the first time — 53% women artists. HNW collectors held 44% women's work in 2024. At galleries, 40% of represented artists are now women. Change happens when institutions decide to make it happen.

53%

women at the 2019 Venice Biennale — the first time parity was reached

44%

of HNW collectors' holdings were women's work in 2024 — up from 33% in 2018

29.5%

of MoMA acquisitions since 2020 are by women — up from 8% in the 1940s, computed from open data

40%

of gallery-represented artists are now women — the commercial pipeline is finally shifting