Measuring Marginalization: A Critical Analysis of the Gender Gap in the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) Collection

Feminist scholars have increasingly illuminated how art history’s narratives have systematically excluded women, both as creators and as subjects of serious study. Linda Nochlin (1971), for example, has dismantled the myth of male artistic genius by redirecting attention to the structural barriers that have historically limited women’s artistic careers—such as lack of access to formal education, restricted professional opportunities, and confining domestic expectations. Similarly, scholars like Griselda Pollock (1988) have critiqued the masculinist frameworks that have shaped art historical discourse and institutional practices. According to Pollock, museums are not neutral spaces but are rather active agents in upholding patriarchal values because they curate and promote pieces that privilege male-centered ideologies and aesthetics. This body of feminist scholarship highlights how both historical and institutional practices have led to the marginalization of women’s contributions within the art world.

More recent scholarship and activism have shifted from questions of visibility and inclusion to interrogating the institutional and cultural frameworks that continue to position women artists as peripheral creators. Groups like the Guerrilla Girls have played a crucial role in exposing and challenging gender inequities in the art world. Since their founding in 1985, the Guerrilla Girls have used humor, visual satire, and statistical evidence to confront the exclusion of women from major institutions such as MoMA. Their iconic poster—“Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?”—sharply criticized how women are often objectified rather than recognized as artists, sparking widespread discussion within the art community (Getty Research Institute, n.d.). Parallel to these activist efforts, scholars such as Whitney Chadwick (2007) have offered global perspectives on how female artists have historically been marginalized through institutional indifference and cultural narratives that prioritize male creators. Chadwick emphasizes that women’s work is often positioned in opposition to mainstream art rather than being fully integrated into it. For example, even when women are included in exhibitions, their work is often framed within limiting narratives—such as being categorized solely under “women’s art” rather than being integrated into the broader canon. This form of symbolic inclusion often reinforces marginalization rather than challenging it. Together, these scholarly and activist perspectives reinforce the understanding that institutions like MoMA have not only favored male artists but have also relegated women to secondary status, both in representation and in recognition. As these critiques demonstrate, meaningful inclusion in the art world requires more than visibility – it require restructuring institutional priorities and re-evaluating how cultural legitimacy is assigned in the art world.

While museums have acted to improve gender inequality within their collections, progress remains slow and inconsistent. In 2022, The Art Newspaper published a major report revealing that only 11 percent of artworks acquired by top U.S. museums were by female artists (McGivern 2022). That such a gap persists—even amid widespread calls for diversity and inclusion—establishes the scale of female artists’ marginalization. The study also noted that exhibitions displaying the work of female artists appeared significantly less often than those featuring male artists, suggesting that acquisition efforts alone are insufficient to address systemic inequities. Even when museums work to diversify their collections, critics have pointed out that many works end up in side galleries, not the main spaces—suggesting these efforts may be tokenistic. In his article in New York Magazine, Jerry Saltz (2007) acknowledged the intentions behind these more inclusive practices but emphasized that lasting change requires an ongoing institutional readiness to address such disparities, rather than one-off initiatives. To ensure meaningful representation, museums must commit to integrating the works of female artists into their acquisition and curatorial practices for the long-term.

MoMA’s recent acquisitions feature works by renowned female artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Marlene Dumas, and Yayoi Kusama. Although these additions signify progress, they fall short of addressing the underlying structural inequalities within the art world. The continued underrepresentation of contemporary female artists raises critical concerns about whether current institutional practices can adequately support the development of future generations of women creators.

While gender inequality remains a critical lens through which to examine disparities in art institutions, it is also essential to account for intersecting factors such as race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, which often exacerbate these inequities. Black, Latina, and multiracial women artists face heightened marginalization within dominant art narratives, with their contributions frequently overlooked or excluded from mainstream recognition. Scholars such as bell hooks and Audre Lorde have long advocated for an intersectional framework—one that understands cultural contexts as shaped by overlapping and interdependent systems of oppression and power.

MoMA’s collections have historically featured relatively few works by women artists of color. A notable exception occurred in 2020 with the inclusion of Faith Ringgold’s American People Series into the museum’s permanent collection, a significant moment for the recognition of Black women’s art (Shoard 2024). While this acquisition was widely seen as a positive step, it was accompanied by notable restrictions regarding access to and display of the collection. Moreover, the contributions of pioneering Black women artists such as Alma Thomas, Howardena Pindell, and Carrie Mae Weems have received minimal attention within mainstream curatorial narratives. Similarly, Latina artists like Carmen Herrera and Beatriz González have only recently begun to attain the recognition long overdue to them, revealing the need for proactive efforts to account for historical exclusions.

That said, issues of representation in museums go beyond curatorial decisions and inclusion – they are also deeply shaped by the interpretive frameworks that define how art is understood and valued. Scholars such as Aruna D’Souza (2018) argue that institutions often instrumentalize artists of color, framing their work primarily through the lens of identity politics rather than engaging with the works’ aesthetic and conceptual significance. This approach risks reducing complex artistic practices to simplistic narratives of exploitation and resistance, further marginalizing underrepresented voices. Without a shift in how art framed and contextualized – which cannot be achieved through superficial metrics or tokenistic inclusion – institutions risk reinforcing the very exclusions they claim to address.

Data for this study were drawn from MoMA’s online collection database (1929–2023), which includes metadata on artist gender, acquisition year, medium, and exhibition history (MoMA Collection, 2025). The analysis focused on two datasets: artworks.csv file (130,262 entries across 21 variables) and the artists.csv file (15,091 entries across 6 variables). These datasets were examined to assess patterns in gender representation within the museum’s collection. While the dataset is extensive, it presents several limitations: it lacks metadata for non-binary and transgender artists, and the data reflects historical biases such as the misgendering, omission, or marginalization of women artists.

The two datasets—artworks.csv and artists.csv—served as inputs to the model. Figure 1 presents a diagram outlining the workflow used for trend prediction.

To forecast trends in gender representation, both linear and polynomial regression models were employed. Regression analysis was conducted to capture varying data patterns over time. Notably, representation of female artists exhibited an accelerating trend in later years that linear regression failed to capture fully. In contrast, polynomial regression more accurately reflected this acceleration, providing a better fit for modeling the increase in the representation of female artists within the dataset. Overall, the predictive analysis reveals a steady upward trend in the inclusion of female artists, with polynomial regression offering enhanced modeling, particularly in later years.

Further analysis of MoMA’s collection reveals consistent patterns of gender imbalance across various measures. Visual data illustrates disparities not only in the overall distribution of male and female artists, but also among specific nationalities, artistic disciplines, and mediums. These disparities point to larger historical biases that have influenced whose work is collected, exhibited, and celebrated.

Gender disparity is immediately visible in the general makeup of the collection. The pie chart provided in Figure 4 displays the gender breakdown of artists in MoMA’s collection, revealing that 81.8% are male and only 18.2% are female. This gap reflects a significant gender imbalance, one shaped by longstanding historical and institutional biases in the art world.

Gender patterns also persist across nationalities. The bar chart shown in Figure 5 indicates artist representation by nationality, with American artists appearing most frequently. Louise Bourgeois has the highest representation, followed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lee Friedlander. A similar pattern of male predominance emerges across British, German, and Italian artist categories.

Inequities in gender representation become even more apparent when broken down by artistic discipline. Figure 6 shows male dominance across various artistic disciplines, including painting, sculpture, architecture, and photography. Photography accounts for the highest number of works but is top representation is exclusively male. In architecture, while male representation is somewhat more distributed, there are no female artists among the most represented. Painting, traditionally regarded as a prestigious medium, reveals an extreme gender imbalance, with Pablo Picasso as the leading figure. Sculpture similarly follows a pattern of male overrepresentation.

Representation among the most collected artists offers additional insight into gender-based acquisition trends. A closer examination of Figure 7 shows that Eugène Atget produced the highest number of works in the collection at approximately 5,000, followed by Lesley Van der Werf with around 2,500. Sarah Benjamin stands out as one of the most represented female artists, with around 3,500 works, whereas Lily Peters has roughly 750. The top-ranked male artist has significantly more works than the top-ranked female artist. This disparity becomes more pronounced further down the rankings: the fifth most represented woman has approximately 250 pieces, while her male counterpart has about 1,500. These figures suggest that women artists have historically encountered barriers to inclusion, potentially due to systemic biases in acquisition practices, underscoring the importance of advancing more equitable representation policies.

Finally, considering gender representation by artistic medium reveals additional contrasts. Figure 8 presents gender representation across four artistic mediums in MoMA’s collection. Male artists significantly outnumber female artists in painting (82% vs. 18%), sculpture (78% vs. 22%), and photography (65% vs. 35%). In contrast, textiles is the only medium where female artists represent the majority, comprising 66% of the artists in the collection. These figures highlight medium-specific gender disparities in the museum’s holdings.

This study’s results have brought to light the many dimensions of male overrepresentation within MoMA’s collection, revealing how gender imbalances manifest across nationalities and mediums. The data not only reflects a disproportionate presence of male artists overall but also shows how men continue to dominate traditionally prestigious fields like painting and sculpture. Research has likewise revealed a persistent bias favoring male artists as “innovators,” such as Picasso and Pollock. In contrast, female artists were often excluded from gallery spaces and the collector networks that contributed works to MoMA. Although the museum’s 2019 reinstallation aimed to increase the visibility of women artists, it drew criticism for practicing checklist feminism—including works by women without fully acknowledging or addressing their historical exclusion and marginalization (Reilly 2019). With such criticisms in mind, this study points to the need for museums to examine the practices that perpetuate gender disparities and influence the cultural narratives presented to the public, not only in terms of inclusion, but also in terms of nationality, medium, and other forms of representation.

The following supporting information can be downloaded at the website of this paper posted on Preprints.org.