From record-breaking auction sales to major museum retrospectives, 2025 has been a transformative year for women in the visual arts. Here’s everything you need to know about the artists, exhibitions, and market shifts defining this historic moment.
Historic Auction Records
The Year Women Dominated the Salesroom
Marlene Dumas Makes History
In May 2025, South African-born Dutch painter Marlene Dumas shattered the auction record for a living female artist when her 1997 painting Miss January sold for $13.6 million at Christie’s New York.
The monumental work—standing nearly three metres tall—depicts a beauty queen in a powerful reinterpretation of the female nude. Christie’s described it as Dumas’s “magnum opus,” noting that through this painting, Dumas “triumphantly demonstrates a formal mastery of the woman’s body while simultaneously freeing it from a tradition of subjection.”
The sale surpassed Jenny Saville’s previous record of $12.4 million set in 2018. While the gender gap in art valuations persists—works by male artists still fetch significantly higher prices—Dumas’s triumph signals a broader recalibration in the market.
Women Dominated Christie’s 21st Century Sale
That same evening saw women artists carry the night:
Major Museum Exhibitions
Pioneering Women Take Centre Stage
European galleries are hosting a remarkable series of exhibitions featuring some of the biggest names in 20th-century art.
Louise Bourgeois
Louise Bourgeois’s iconic “Maman” (1999) at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. The 9-metre spider sculpture is an ode to her mother. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The late French-American artist, famed for her towering spider sculptures, is featured at The Courtauld Gallery in London with fantastical sculptures and dreamlike drawings. A major retrospective is also planned for PoMo in Trondheim, Norway, opening February 2026.
Bourgeois’s spiders—including the monumental Maman—are tributes to her mother, a weaver. “The spider is an ode to my mother,” Bourgeois once said. “She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was very clever… spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother.”
Barbara Kruger
The American collagist and conceptual artist has a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, showcasing her powerful text-based works that challenge consumerism and power structures.
Cindy Sherman
Known for her chameleonic self-portraiture, Sherman’s work is on display at Hauser & Wirth Menorca in the Balearic Islands—a beautiful setting for her transformative photographs.
Museums worldwide are dedicating major exhibitions to women artists in 2025. Photo: Unsplash
Rediscovering Overlooked Masters
Museums are also dedicating shows to late women artists who never received their due recognition:
The Woman Question: 500 Years of Women’s Art
Opening November 2025 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the exhibition “Gabriele Münter: Into Deep Waters” challenges the notion that women were largely absent from art before the late 1800s. Curated by Alison M. Gingeras, it presents nearly 200 works spanning 500 years.
Artists to Watch in 2025
The Women Shaping Contemporary Art
A new generation of women artists is pushing boundaries across painting, sculpture, and mixed media. Photo: Unsplash
Helen Beard
With her pop-tinged nudes, Beard walks the tightrope between abstraction and figuration. Working across painting, collage and sculpture, she reclaims femininity from objectification with a fiercely intimate, woman-focused perspective.
Deborah Segun
Nigerian-British artist Segun’s stylised figures offer meditations on self-love and identity—a counter-narrative to perfectionism and performative femininity. Recent solo exhibitions in London (A Moment To Myself) and Athens (Letting Yourself Be) have positioned her as one of the most thoughtful voices in contemporary women’s art.
Jessica Brilli
Based in Massachusetts, Brilli creates crisp, sun-drenched compositions rooted in realism but softened by cinematic calm. Mining old Kodachrome slides, her paintings balance graphic design influences with reverence for human stories and collective nostalgia.
Bridget Riley
Now in her 90s, the Op Art pioneer remains one of the most vital artists working today, still refining the language of abstraction with the same relentless curiosity that defined her groundbreaking work in the 1960s.
Market Trends & Analysis
2025 has seen real momentum in the women’s art market:
Collectors are increasingly recognising women artists as both culturally important and sound investments. Photo: Unsplash
What’s Driving the Change?
Grants, Awards & Opportunities
Major Grants Available
Anonymous Was A Woman — Now offering $50,000 unrestricted grants to 15 woman-identifying artists over 40. To date, the programme has awarded over $8 million to more than 400 artists.
Forward Art Prize — Two annual $10,000 awards for women-identifying visual artists in Dane County, Wisconsin.
SOLA Awards — Five $5,000 grants for Washington State female-identified visual artists aged 60+.
Pollock-Krasner Foundation — Grants ranging from $5,000 to $50,000 to support women visual artists.
Competitions Open Now
The Women in Art Prize 2025 is accepting applications across painting, photography, printmaking, and sculpture. Special categories include:
Global Exhibitions This Season
From Washington D.C. to Mexico City, major institutions are celebrating women artists. Photo: Unsplash
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C. Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600-1750 September 2025 – January 2026 Works by more than forty women artists from the Low Countries—many presented for the first time in the United States.
Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw The Woman Question: 1550–2025 November 2025 – May 2026 A centuries-long visual history of women’s “emancipation” through art.
Whitney Museum, New York Amy Sherald: American Sublime April – August 2025 50 works from the artist behind Michelle Obama’s official portrait.
Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City Delcy Morelos: El espacio vientre / The womb space October 2025 – June 2026 Large-format installations exploring body, skin, race, land, and gender.
Looking Ahead
The momentum building around women artists in 2025 is undeniable—but it’s important to maintain perspective. Only 30% of the world’s music streams feature female artists. Works by women still fetch a fraction of their male counterparts at auction. The pipeline is opening, but systemic change takes sustained effort.
What’s clear is that collectors, museums, and galleries are paying attention. The smart money—and the committed advocates—will press this advantage.
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