MAG The Women Gallery Opens an Online Platform Devoted to Women Artists
A former L’Oréal executive is trying to address one of the art market’s most persistent imbalances. In 2024, Jean-Baptiste Bettencourt founded MAG The Women Gallery, an online gallery dedicated exclusively to women artists and built around a simple but pointed premise: visibility remains uneven, and the market still reflects that gap.
Bettencourt, who spent nearly 37 years at L’Oréal, says the move into art was shaped by a long familiarity with talent development. He describes his corporate career as one centered on identifying potential, supporting growth, and creating opportunities for people to succeed. That logic now informs the gallery’s mission, which is to present women artists across painting, sculpture, photography, and work on paper, while helping them reach collectors and audiences beyond the usual gatekeepers.
The gallery’s founding also carries a personal dimension. Bettencourt has said he was influenced by watching his mother gradually step away from her own artistic practice to support his father’s, a pattern that has repeated across generations in the art world and beyond. That experience sharpened his sense of how often women’s work is sidelined, even when the quality of the work is not in question.
He points to a striking statistic as part of the gallery’s motivation: women artists account for around 2 percent of global art sales. Against that backdrop, MAG The Women Gallery positions itself as both a commercial platform and an act of advocacy, offering emerging and established artists a dedicated space in which their work can be seen, discussed, and acquired.
The gallery’s roster includes Claude Stassart-Springer, Elizabeth Lennard, and To Bich Hay. Lennard’s work has been exhibited at the Louvre and the Grand Palais, a reminder that the gallery is not narrowing the field so much as reframing it.
As more of the art market moves online, MAG The Women Gallery is staking out a clear position: representation is not a side issue, but part of the structure itself. The question it raises is whether greater access can also help correct a market that has long undervalued women’s contributions.
