THE WOMAN QUESTION
1550–2025

It’s a fallacy that women artists were rare exceptions before the 20th century. The Woman Question demonstrates that women have consistently pursued their creative missions despite being often underappreciated and operating against various social restrictions. Women have asserted their artistic presence while simultaneously using their art to represent and validate their individual experiences. In addition to showcasing a diverse range of artistic practices, the exhibition aims to show the power inherent in a feminist approach to art history—one that demands justice, restores the voices of the “erased,” and leads to a revision of the so-called canon.

Before the advent of modern feminism, there was “the woman question.” La querelle des femmes was the phrase used by writers such as Christine de Pizan (1364 – c.1430), who authored Le Livre de la cité des dames (The Book of the City of Ladies, 1405). Her allegorical city was imagined to offer protection and to conserve the histories of important women. Pizan’s writing was among the first to articulate challenges to the systemic misogyny that was the norm in European society. Asking “the woman question” (as the querelle became known in English) radically identified a previously unrecognized social and political category: women. Pizan and her cohort of early modern feminist philosophers articulated the link between gender and power, laying the foundation for movements that have come to be known as feminism. “The woman question” emerged as a coded refrain for intellectual and political interrogation of women’s subjugation and became a rallying cry for revolutionary and suffragist movements. The exhibition borrows this phrase to encapsulate almost five hundred years of women’s creativity.

The open-endedness of the “question” of the exhibition’s title reflects how the very category “woman” has itself emerged as a question to be explored by a range of artists—in particular those who identify as trans-women, gender non-conforming or as non-binary. By adopting an all-inclusive definition of womanhood, this exhibition hopes to prolong the legacy of this early feminist querelle into our present day.

Femmes Fortes: Allegories and Agency

This gallery is dedicated to the emergence of the femmes fortes genre in 17th-century Europe—depictions of heroic images of virtuous women such as Judith, Cleopatra and Lucretia. These subjects animate works by Artemisia Gentileschi and Angelika Kauffmann. Modern and contemporary artists (including Lubaina Himid, Chiara Fumai, Betty Tompkins, Miriam Cahn, Cindy Sherman and Yoko Ono) return to these historical figures and present them from a feminist perspective.

Palettes and Power: The Self Portrait as Manifesto

This gallery is dedicated to the “palette portrait,” a genre of self-portraiture invented by women artists in the 16th century; it allowed women artists to manifest their creative identities. From Sofonisba Anguissola to Élisabeth Vigée Lebrun, Lavinia Fontana, Lisa Brice and Somaya Critchlow, the works presented in this chapter attest to the status of women artists over five centuries.

Education and the Canon

This section explores the structural barriers that women have encountered—lack of access to academies or life drawing classes and their prohibition from artistic guilds. Here, we also examine the ways in which contemporary women artists have used their agency to write themselves into the canon of art history. Works by Marie Bashkirtseff, Claudette Johnson, Faith Ringgold, Guerrilla Girls and Art Project Revolution raise questions about access to education, gendered and racial gatekeeping, as well as the role of politics in the creation of the canon.

A Muse of Her Own

With the gradual opening of academies to women students in the 19th century, women began to seek ways to express themselves beyond the genre of the “palette portrait.” Taking their own complex identities as their muse, the artists featured in this impressive gallery of self-portraits, including Marie-Nicole Vestier, Fahrelnissa Zeid, Sonia Boyce, Françoise Gilot, Yvonne Wells, Anita Rée and Celia Paul, address themes around cultural identity, motherhood and the evolving image of the “new woman.”

Surreal Self, Mystical Me: Symbolism, Surrealism and Mysticism

In this section of the exhibition, we look at dreamscapes and mythic self-images through a diverse collection of works by artists such as Leonor Fini, Anna Güntner, Francesca Woodman, vanessa german, Małgorzata Mycek, Iiu Susiraja and Genowefa Magiera. The portraits gathered here, whether surreal, symbolic or spiritual, reveal the inner landscapes of women’s agency and creativity.

No Gate, No Lock, No Bolt: Imaginaries Unleashed

Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s call for intellectual and emotional freedom, this chapter celebrates the unleashing of women’s erotic imaginaries. The works presented here by Ithell Colquhoun, Tamara Łempicka, Ambera Wellman, Lisa Yuskavage, Lotte Laserstein, Barbara Falender and Jordan Casteel, among other artists, explore gender reversals, eroticism and liberation from the male gaze.

Of Woman Born

Drawing on Adrienne Rich’s feminist treatise, this chapter examines motherhood not only as an institution but as lived experience. Through works by Madame du Coudray, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Marlene Dumas, Frida Orupabo, Monika Sjöö, Catherine Opie, Clarity Haynes, Everlyn Nicodemus, Louise Bourgeois, Tracey Emin and Frida Kahlo the exhibition confronts pregnancy, loss, birth, reproductive choice, and maternal power. 

Wartime Women

Centering on women’s roles in armed conflict, this powerful closing chapter focuses on Eastern European experiences and includes historical works from World War II and the Shoah, as well as contemporary works from Ukraine. Artists such as Ceija Stojka, Teresa Żarnower, Zuzanna Hertzberg, Kataryna Lysovenko, and Lesia Khomenko, among others, challenge gender expectations during wartime, portraying women as warriors, witnesses and survivors.

In order to make this continuity of women’s authorship legible over such a long span of art history, the exhibition privileges figurative painting and sculpture. The Woman Question asserts that images are power and focuses on visual narratives that make different forms of agency and assertions of identity legible. Featuring some of the earliest examples of women artists’ work, this iconographic journey will juxtapose artwork from different periods and disciplines dealing with common themes. 

The Woman Question 1550–2025 is more than a historical survey—it is a call to reframe art history through the lens of feminist continuity and resistance. As art historian Mary Garrard has written, “Feminism existed before we knew what to call it.” This exhibition makes that lineage visible.