Increasingly, Women Are Running the World’s Great Museums

This article is part of our special report on the Art for Tomorrow conference in the Italian cities of Florence and Solomeo.

When Laurence des Cars was appointed president-director of the Louvre in 2021, it was a historic marker. The world’s most visited museum had a woman in charge for the first time since it was founded in 1793.

“Top jobs are symbols,” Ms. des Cars said recently in an interview. “And I take the symbol very seriously.”

At the time, she already held an important lead role at a major institution, running the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, but the reaction to the Louvre news surprised her for what she called the “intensity and worldwide echo of the announcement.”

Ms. des Cars was the highest-profile example in a wave of women taking the top jobs at some of the world’s biggest museums.

The last few years have seen women taking over from men to lead Tate, comprising four British museums; the Vatican Museums; the National Gallery of Art in Washington; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Saint Louis Art Museum and many more. And it only seems to be accelerating.

The topic may come up at a panel discussion at the Art for Tomorrow conference, running from April 26 to 30 in Florence and Solomeo, in Italy. Speakers for the April 27 panel, “Gender and the Arts — Crises and Correctives,” include Dana Dajani, an actress and poet; Rachel Lehmann, a co-founder of Lehmann Maupin gallery; and Christian Levett, an art collector.

“I’m encouraged to see this field of women,” said Anne Pasternak, who was appointed director of the Brooklyn Museum in 2015. “Someone said recently we’re becoming a ‘pink collar’ profession.”

Sasha Suda, who took over from Timothy Rub as director of the Philadelphia Museum last year, said that, given that women comprise 51 percent of humanity, “The big question is why this didn’t happen until now.”

Ellen V. Futter, who in March stepped down after nearly 30 years as president of the American Museum of Natural History, was the rare exception in a sea of male directors when she got her job.

“I feel great joy at how much more prevalent it has become, and the quality and success of what they have been doing,” Ms. Futter said. She added, “I’m a proud mama.”

Many in the art world agree that the surge is long overdue. But now that they have some of the top jobs, what are female leaders doing with their power, what has the experience been like for them — and what are the reactions to their positions? And is there an appreciable difference in their achievements when compared to male directors?

Many of the women in the top jobs have established a camaraderie and think of themselves as a group.

“We’re all women of a particular generation, in our mid 50s,” said Maria Balshaw, who became director of Tate in 2017 (she oversees Tate Britain and Tate Modern in London; Tate Liverpool; and Tate St. Ives in Cornwall). “We have long track records of innovation and creative leadership. We all support each other through our careers.”

Ms. Balshaw cautioned that despite the progress, museum directors are still overwhelmingly male.

“I was on a Zoom the other day with international museum directors, and it was still 75 percent men,” Ms. Balshaw said. ”There’s still quite a long way to go.”

Kaywin Feldman — who succeeded Earl A. Powell II in 2019 as director of the National Gallery in Washington, making her the museum’s first woman leader — noted the existence of a women’s affinity group within the Association of Art Museum Directors, which meets periodically.

“For the last 10 years, the question has been, ‘Do we still need to meet?” said Ms. Feldman, referring to the progress made. “Someone’s reply was, ‘When the men have their own affinity group, we can stop.’”

Museums frequently have many women in sub-director roles, in particular among curators. “At my institution, 67 percent of the work force is women,” Ms. Balshaw said. “Until very recently, that didn’t flow to the top of the organization.”

Ms. Balshaw added, “History is catching up with the museum. You can’t have this much female talent and not have it filter up to the leadership roles.”

According to a 2022 survey by the nonprofit research group Ithaka S+R, at the North American museums they surveyed, “female employees constitute a large majority, over 75 percent.”

The report also noted, “The representation of female employees in museum leadership has increased substantially, from 58 percent in 2015 to 66 percent in 2022.” The survey was done in partnership with the American Alliance of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors, and it was funded by the Mellon Foundation.

That gives female leaders a pool of talent to pull from when it comes to staffing decisions, and many of them said that elevating other women internally was a priority.

“Not only am I hiring women, I’m promoting women’s ascendancy,” said Marcelle Polednik, the director of the Milwaukee Art Museum since 2016 and the first woman leader in its history.

Hiring decisions are important, but they are not always immediately appreciable to museum visitors, who come for the art.

“It’s quicker to change the program than anything else,” Ms. Balshaw said of the impact a director can make with exhibitions. “We just expect now that our program will be gender-balanced.”

But she pointed out that success on that score depended on the era in question: “You’ll never get a gender balance in the 17th century.”

Though most female museum leaders are white, there are notable exceptions. Black women leaders include one of the longer serving female directors, Thelma Golden of the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Brooke A. Minto, recently appointed to run the Columbus Museum of Art.

Earlier this year, the Pakistan-born Asma Naeem became director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, and Min Jung Kim, who was born and raised in South Korea, took over the Saint Louis Art Museum in 2021.

Diversifying the programming is a stated priority of the women directors.

At the National Gallery of Art, the annual number of purchased works of art by female and nonbinary artists has increased 150 percent since 2018, and the presence of works by artists of color has increased 405 percent in the same period.

“The more diverse we are, the stronger we are,” Ms. Feldman said.

She added that the percentage of shows with significant representation of women went from 4 percent over the past 22 years to 13 percent in shows planned over the next four years — which she acknowledged sounded low. “Change is gradual,” she said.

One topic that not all directors agree on is whether women inherently bring something special to leadership roles, just based on their gender — a theory sometimes called essentialism.

Ms. Feldman thinks so. “There are lots of studies, books and articles about the difference in men’s and women’s leadership styles,” she said. “I do think that you see with women, they tend to be more about consensus building. More collaborative. More humble, empathic and self-deprecating.”

Raphaela Platow, the director of the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Ky., said that her approach was oriented toward “tending and befriending, whereas for men it’s often fight or flight.”

Ms. Platow noted that she grew up in Germany, and ever since high school had wanted to work in art. But role models were scarce. “When I started out, in Germany there were almost no women in museums,” she said.

Some put themselves somewhere in the middle on the essentialism scale. “I’m halfway,” Ms. Balshaw said. “What I think is, most women, by training and acculturation, have gotten farther by collaborating than competing.”

Joanne Heyler, the founding director and president of the Broad museum in Los Angeles, was skeptical. “Watch out for the essentialism trap,” she said.

She noted that many of the major art institutions in Los Angeles had women at the helm, including the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Hammer Museum. “It’s more than a critical mass,” she said. “L.A. is a little more open to exploration and there’s a sense that not every rule has to be followed.”

Ms. des Cars of the Louvre said she was “cautious” when it comes to essentialism adding, “Women can be terrible directors, too. I’ve seen a few.”

But then again, she also noted that at the Louvre, she has made listening to the staff a top priority. “I answer questions openly at least twice a year,” she said, of a meeting of more than 2,000 people, some of whom attend via video call.

Ms. des Cars added, “I’m not sure a man would do that.”

Some institutions had a head start in empowering women, having been led by them before. Last year Ms. Suda took the helm of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but it was led by Anne d’Harnoncourt for more than 25 years beginning in 1982, a storied tenure.

When she was considering the job, Ms. Suda said, “Several of my colleagues said, ‘Philadelphia is amazing, women have run it already and been successful.’ It was a heartening reason to come here, if not the only one.”

When Ms. Pasternak arrived at the Brooklyn Museum, having previously run the nonprofit arts organization Creative Time, it already housed the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. “Equality is part of our DNA,” Ms. Pasternak said. “I’m in a privileged position.”

For her part, Ms. Pasternak said that since she got the director’s chair, she has not experienced sexist pushback — but others have.

Ms. Polednik of Milwaukee recalled that when she arrived at the museum, she had a 3-year-old, and she was keen on the idea of special stroller tours for parents of young children. “People are fretful of bringing children to the museum,” she said.

Ms. Polednik mentioned it to a male donor. His reply, she said, was, “‘You don’t really want those kids in the museum do you? They should be at home with their mothers taking care of them.’”

It’s not always so overt, she added. “It happens in all sorts of subtle ways.”

Raising money from donors is a major part of most museum directors’ schedules, unless they have primary funding from the government.

“Women have to prove themselves more,” Ms. Pasternak said, noting that Brooklyn’s endowment has nearly doubled during her tenure. “People don’t trust their assets with women in the way they do with men. It’s very subconscious.”

She said that the process has gotten easier with the advent of more women patrons. “Increasingly we’re seeing more legacy gifts by women,” she said. “Women are putting their names on buildings. They’re stepping up.” Recently, Brooklyn received a $3 million gift from Iris Cantor to refresh its outdoor plaza.

Ms. Futter said that, looking back over her long tenure, she was particularly aware of the need for talent, regardless of gender. “I hope there are great opportunities for men, too,” she said. “We need everybody in the orchestra.”