Making Their Mark Forum Panels Put the Art Market and Museums on the Spot Over Gender Equity
A pointed question hung in the air at the Making Their Mark Forum: who gets to define value in the art world, and who is left out of the room when those decisions are made?
That tension surfaced most sharply during “The System Reimagined — Women in the Art Market: Visibility, Value and Access,” moderated by Amy Cappellazzo, founding partner of Art Intelligence Global and a former auction house executive. Her opening metaphor set the tone for a conversation that would repeatedly return to the limits of control in a system driven by money and perception. “The market is like the weather,” Cappellazzo said. “No point complaining about it, no point trying to control it. Just take an umbrella, get a good coat, be prepared for it. That’s the only way to survive it.”
Onstage with Cappellazzo were Mary Sabbatino, a longtime vice president and partner at Galerie Lelong; Renee B. Adams, a professor of finance at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School; and Bonnie Brennan, chief executive officer of Christie’s. The panel became a rare, direct exchange between gallery and auction perspectives, with the discussion widening beyond women artists to the broader mechanics of how reputations are made and unmade.
Brennan addressed a subject auction houses are often reluctant to discuss in public: the ways auctions can damage living artists when estimates and expectations are mismanaged. “In my career, I’ve seen that sometimes not handled with the delicacy that it should,” she said, pointing to advisors who push for estimates that are too high.
To illustrate the scale of gender inequity at auction, Brennan referenced Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s $55 million auction record, using it to underscore how demand and pricing power for women artists still lag behind their male counterparts. Brennan also pointed to the wealth transfer currently underway, arguing that increased buying power among women collectors could shift visibility and value for women artists. “We can help make sure that works by female artists are front and center for that incredible buying power,” she said.
Brennan framed women collectors as institution-minded patrons as well as buyers. “Women, by nature, are more civic-minded,” she added. “They’re not just putting things on their walls; they’re thinking about the institutions they support and what they want to see in those institutions.”
Yet the panel’s underlying premise remained unresolved: women artists are often asked to rely on women collectors precisely because broader societal bias continues to undervalue their work.
That gap between market talk and artistic reality was called out moments later, when artist Andrea Bowers joined Glenstone Museum director Emily Wei Rales onstage for a separate conversation about how patrons can support artists. Before turning to their own discussion, Bowers addressed the previous panel head-on. “I just want to say, there weren’t any artists on that last panel,” she said, drawing loud applause. “I felt a little infantilized at times, because we don’t always make art just for the market.”
A second forum conversation, focused on museum practice, brought similar friction into the open. Moderated by Rhea Combs, a senior curatorial fellow in contemporary and global art at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the panel featured Christophe Cherix, director of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA); Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; Anne Pasternak, director of the Brooklyn Museum; and curator Sandra Jackson-Dumont, a Getty President’s Scholar and former director of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.
With museum leaders in the audience, including MoMA board president Sarah Arison, the discussion turned to how institutions can make progress that is structural rather than symbolic. Cherix, the only male panelist across the forum, argued that leadership must protect curatorial risk-taking. “Museum leadership needs to be there to create a safe space where [curators] have the right to take risks and also the right to fail,” he said.
Pasternak emphasized measurement as a foundational tool for accountability, advocating for tracking women’s representation across collections, exhibitions, staff, boards, and contractors. Feldman, speaking from the perspective of an institution shaped heavily by philanthropy, noted that 80 percent of additions to the National Gallery of Art’s collection come from gifts — a reminder that museum narratives are often built through donor priorities as much as curatorial intent.
Komal Shah, founder of the Making Their Mark Foundation, underscored that stewardship is not a passive role but one that requires action and community. Across both panels, a shared conclusion emerged: recognition, valuation, and perception in the art world are still closely tethered to money — and changing outcomes will require changing the structures that money moves through.
As the forum made clear, the next phase of gender equity will not be won through rhetoric alone. It will be shaped by who sits at the table, what gets measured, and whether institutions and markets are willing to be held to their own numbers.
