When curator and entrepreneur Emma Lang took a closer look at the art world, she was struck by just how many layers of injustice were baked into the system—gender, race, disability, you name it. The more she saw, the more glaring it became: artists who were women were being actively left behind. In 2021, Lang launched SOTA, a purpose-driven online gallery designed to uplift a broad range of visual artists, from painters to photographers, and rewrite the rules of engagement. Her mission? To “dismantle the world in which many people are being left behind, get rid of the risk economy and actually pay women to work versus asking them to work for free or pay to show.” In addition to representing artists, Lang’s platform offers educational resources, connects creators with show opportunities in museums and hotels, and is steadily growing a network of art consultants. She remains optimistic about the future, convinced that “SOTA can be a vehicle to make art more accessible and as a result, have a better society.”
She’s not alone in wanting to do something. Every year for Women’s History Month since 2016, the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, D.C., goes on social media to ask the public to name #5WomenArtists. It’s a conversation starter designed to prompt people to consider what it might take to achieve true gender equity in the arts. We’ve come a long way, but statistics suggest there’s still a long way to go. Women’s auction prices are, on average, much lower than men’s. Institutions acquire and show fewer artworks by women. Sites like Artsy see fewer inquiries for pieces by women. “We need support for women at all levels of the art world, not just in exhibitions,” NMWA curator Orin Zahra told Observer. Today is International Women’s Day, and if you feel inspired to do more than name #5WomenArtists on social media, look for exhibitions that will put you face-to-face with their art. We’ve rounded up a few of the best below.
“Mickalene Thomas: All About Love”
Glimmering rhinestones scatter reflections across the room, their playful sparkle adding depth to Mickalene Thomas’ large-scale collages. The moment I step into “All About Love,” I’m enveloped by towering portraits of Black women—commanding, layered compositions built from photographs, acrylic paint, patterned backgrounds and intricate rhinestone embellishments. This is Thomas’ signature, her visual language, her way of reclaiming space in the art world and history for women of color.
“All About Love” feels less like an exhibition and more like stepping into Thomas’ world—an intimate, exuberant space pulsing with color and texture, as if you’ve been invited to spend the afternoon in her home. Her work, deeply rooted in fashion and DIY culture, explores Black women’s sexuality, power and beauty on their own terms. Moving through the gallery, you encounter striking portraits of Sandra “Mama” Bush—Thomas’ mother—alongside depictions of friends, singers and former lovers. Upstairs, jazz crackles from a spinning record player, while patchwork couches in bright fabrics and shag create corners of warmth and familiarity, mirroring the safe spaces Thomas fosters for her subjects.
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Many of the pieces reimagine iconic moments in European art, placing Black women squarely at the center of the narrative. One such work, Sleep: Deux femmes noires, is Thomas’ take on Gustave Courbet’s Le Sommeil—a lush, layered collage depicting two Black women resting in a field of deep green. Later works in the exhibition reflect her experiments in portrait photography and collages influenced by the American Civil Rights Movement. Ultimately, “All About Love” is joyful, sharp and boundary-defying—both in its technique and its celebration of Black womanhood. “All About Love” is at the Hayward Gallery at London’s Southbank Centre through May 5, 2025.
“Samantha Box: Confluences”
“Confluences” is an exhibition that traces the evolution of Jamaican-born, New York-based photographer Samantha Box’s two-decade career, from raw documentary photography to richly layered studio work. Currently on view at NMWA, the show brings together themes of gender, sexuality, homelessness, immigration and race, reflecting both her subjects’ realities and her own.
The first body of work in “Confluences,” Invisible Archives, presents black-and-white images from Box’s seven-year documentation of Sylvia’s Place, an emergency shelter for unhoused queer youth in Hell’s Kitchen. Rather than imposing a predetermined narrative, Box immersed herself in the space and “let the truth of the narrative come to me.” The images are intimate and unflinching, shaped by her own lived experiences. “I could have been one of those youth,” she tells Observer. “There was a fair amount of precarity in my life.”
The exhibition’s final section, Caribbean Dreams, marks a striking shift in Box’s practice. Moving beyond documentary photography, she turns the lens on her own identity as a Black, queer, Jamaican-Trinidadian woman raised in New Jersey. These lush, still-life images—reminiscent of classical painting—feature fruit, curry powder and price tags, objects that speak to the commodification of Caribbean culture and the complexities of diasporic identity.
Through “Confluences,” Box asserts her place in the art world on her own terms. “Now I get to determine what this narrative is, and that’s hugely powerful,” she said. The exhibition is a testament to that power—a reclamation of identity, history and artistic agency. “Confluences” is at NMWA through March 23, 2025.
“Mary Sully: Native Modern”
“Mary Sully: Native Modern,” recently at the Met and soon headed to the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia), brings long-overdue attention to an artist whose groundbreaking work was nearly lost to time. Born Susan Deloria on Standing Rock Reservation in 1896, she later took the name of her mother, Mary Sully, and developed an artistic style that seamlessly blended Modernism with Native design. But for decades, her work was seen by almost no one beyond her family, packed away in boxes and passed from relative to relative before finally emerging into public view.
“Native Modern” is the first stand-alone exhibition of Sully’s work, and it positions her as a pivotal figure in Native modernism long before the term was even recognized. The exhibition presents over one hundred of Sully’s intricate, boldly colored drawings, which defy the rigid categories of both Modern and Native American art. Using colored pencil, ink and crayons, she created rhythmic compositions of repeating symbols and striking precision. The heart of the collection is her “personality prints,” triptych-like works dedicated to cultural figures such as Fred Astaire and Gertrude Stein. These pieces fuse geometric abstraction with a deep engagement with the visual language of Dakota traditions while also meditating on the energy of urban life—a duality shaped by her upbringing on a reservation and her time in 1930s New York, where she shadowed her sister on linguistic research projects. “Native Modern” will open at the Minneapolis Institute of Art on March 15 and runs through September 21, 2025.
“Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie”
Launching March 24 at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Monstrous Beauty” is poised to dismantle long-held notions about porcelain, chinoiserie and the tangled legacies of gender and race embedded within them. This ambitious exhibition pairs historic porcelain—traded from China to Europe as early as the 16th century—with contemporary art, offering a feminist critique of chinoiserie’s enduring influence.
Chinoiserie, a European interpretation (or, more accurately, reinvention) of Chinese artistic traditions, flourished during the era of porcelain’s arrival in Europe. The style reflected both a Western fantasy of the East and the evolving construction of femininity—porcelain, much like women of the time, was seen as delicate, ornamental and easily broken. The trope became particularly insidious when applied to Asian women, reinforcing stereotypes that persist today. “Monstrous Beauty” confronts these illusions head-on, reclaiming the narrative as one of female power rather than fragility.
The exhibition brings together more than 200 works—historic European porcelain alongside contemporary pieces by Asian and Asian American women artists—to unravel this complex story. It begins with porcelain’s long voyage from Asia to Europe, tracing its ascent as a symbol of wealth and refinement. Queen Mary II of England’s obsession with porcelain and the rise of chinoiserie set the stage for the integration of tea culture, linking women to porcelain in a way that blurred the lines between domesticity, social expectation and aesthetic objectification. The exhibition then moves into the ways art and media have perpetuated these ideals, culminating in a powerful final section that examines the aftermath of chinoiserie in the 20th Century and beyond—interrogating its impact on film, photography and the ongoing stereotyping of Asian women. “Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie” opens at the Met on March 24 and runs through August 17, 2025.
More feminist art to explore
From art fairs to solo exhibitions to immersive projects, the coming months offer a wealth of opportunities to engage with artworks by women. In the U.K., South London Gallery is showcasing “Between Wood and Wheel” through May 11, a vibrant, dreamlike collection of paintings by Christina Kimeze. Inspired by the resurgence of roller skating in Black communities, Kimeze explores the themes of freedom and flight through a female lens, layering movement, memory and bold color into her compositions.
Also in London, the Affordable Art Fair returns to Battersea Park from March 12-16, aligning with Women’s History Month to present Resilience in Bloom, a dedicated gallery celebrating women artists who are reclaiming narratives around femininity and identity. Expect boundary-pushing works from Catalan artist Àngels Grau, who paints using wine lees—the sediment at the bottom of barrels—and photographer Lexi Laine, whose underwater images are captured in a single breath while freediving. Visitors can also contribute to STITCH: A Journey, a participatory project by Lebanese-British artist Aya Haidar, inspired by her family’s displacement. Attendees can stitch their own stories into a growing textile work, which will later be auctioned to support communities affected by war and gender inequality.
In Washington, D.C., NMWA’s latest exhibition, “Uncanny,” challenges conventional notions of women’s art with a bold mix of sculpture, painting, video and photography. “Women’s art is traditionally seen as being pretty or comfortable,” said Zahra. “’Uncanny’ turns that narrative upside down.”
For those with a taste for Old Masters, Paris’ Musée Jacquemart-André will open a major survey of works by Artemisia Gentileschi on March 19 that runs through August 3. The show brings together a stunning collection of the 17th-century Italian painter’s works, many of which center on fierce and complex heroines. Meanwhile, in the South of France, Femmes Artistes du Musée de Mougins (FAMM) is staking its claim as a destination for feminist art history. It opened in June of 2024 in a town just outside Cannes, becoming the first museum in France dedicated exclusively to works by women artists, past and present, and offering a necessary—and long overdue—correction to the historical record.
