From record-breaking auction sales to major museum retrospectives, 2025 has been a landmark year for women artists. Here’s everything you need to know.

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

The Numbers Tell the Story

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

Funding for Women Artists

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

Don’t Miss These Shows

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.