US art museum to only buy works by women in 2020, as it starts to address gender imbalance in its collection

Like most museums, the Baltimore Museum of Art has hardly any works by women. It will buy only women’s art for a year, and showcase the works it has already

Critics say a lot more needs doing, and director agrees it’s only a small step, but hopes Baltimore’s example reverberates through the art museum world

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An exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, the US. The museum will buy only works by women for a year as a step to addressing a huge gender imbalance in the artists its collection represents. Photo: AFP via Getty Images

Published: 2:00am, 10 Feb 2020Updated: 7:07am, 10 Feb 2020

An American museum has come up with a way to boost women’s participation in the arts: this year it will only acquire works by females.

The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), in the state of Maryland, is best known for housing the largest public collection of Matisse works anywhere in the world. Late last year it attracted major press attention with word that in 2020 it would only purchase works by women, drawing both praise and scepticism.

“I think it’s a radical and timely decision in 2020, to take the bull by the horns and do this,” says the museum’s director, Christopher Bedford.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the 19th Amendment to the US constitution, which gave women the right to vote. It also gave the museum pause to do some soul-searching: of its 95,000 works, only four per cent are by women artists, says Bedford.

The exterior of the Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland. Photo: AFP via Getty Images

“We’re an institution largely built by women leaders,” he says. The museum’s first director was a woman. And it is largely thanks to two women – the Cone sisters – and their friendship with Henri Matisse that the museum boasts such a rich collection of works by the French artist.