5 Absolutely and Totally Off the Mark Predictions for the Women’s Art Market in 2023

Jan 18

A few things I'm predicting for women in 2023:

1 . Each major art gallery will add two women to its roster: one incredibly old and one very young.

This one, frankly, is not too far off the mark, as it’s pretty consistent with what we’ve seen in the past few years. For every Pat Steir (Hauser & Wirth), there’s an Anna Weyant (Gagosian).

2. A museum retrospective of the work of a woman artist will exceed the museum’s record visitor numbers.

This one isn’t impossible either! In 2018 the Guggenheim’s Hilma af Klint retrospective was the most visited exhibition in the museum’s history. So what will it be this year? Simone Leigh at the ICA Boston? Wangechi Mutu at the New Museum? Marina Abramovic at the RA?

3. Yayoi Kusama will donate the totality of her royalties from the Louis Vuitton collab to a charity that supports women artists (she’ll keep the truly disturbing three story tall replica of herself currently installed at the Louis Vuitton flagship in Paris for herself).

As far as I can tell, Kusama has little philanthropic involvement besides her museum (her foundation is responsible for running it), but maybe Kusama will find little to do with what is sure to be millions of dollars in royalties (she has lived in the same mental health facility for decades) and she’ll set something up. She has made little comment on the collaboration itself, so this is an unlikely outcome.

4. Carmen Herrera will come back from the dead.

Did we really believe that the artist, who died last year at 106, would ever really die?

5. Banksy will reveal herself to be a woman.

Her prices will immediately plummet, proving her point about how willing we are to accept male mediocrity (but how quick we are to dismiss clever women). (Banky’s auction record is double the auction record for a living female artist.)