Women at the MoMA

Where Are All the Women? On MoMA’s identity politics. By Jerry Saltz

"Each fall since MoMA’s reopening in November 2004, I’ve gone to these two floors, counted the number of artworks on view, tallied the number of women artists included, and then pitched a fit in print. So many women artists had come to light over the past few decades that MoMA’s reopening in 2004 became an enormous opportunity to alter its monolithic version of modernism. There was ample evidence that MoMA wanted to do so in 2000, when the permanent collection was totally rethought. Even the usually conservative chief curator of painting and sculpture, John Elderfield, admitted that previous MoMA installations had been “less real than ideal,” adding that the museum now wanted to investigate “multiple narratives.” It sounded as though the institution was on a slow but steady road to equal time."

More from New York Magazine. Plus, Is MoMA the worst offender? Tally of how women fare in six other art-world institutions.