Celebrating its 35th anniversary, the Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art presents for the first time a selection of works from its collection exclusively by women. The first section of the two-part exhibition focuses on women’s roles and women’s (self-)representation in art, while the second section presents the genres and themes chosen by women, as well as their artistic achievements and accomplishments over the past half century, through their works in the museum.
When the Ludwig Museum was founded in the early 1990s, only 8 of the 165 works in the international collection brought to Hungary by Peter and Irene Ludwig were made by female artists, which represented less than 5% of the total. This roughly corresponded to the figure on the Guerrilla Girls’ infamous 1989 poster, “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?”: “Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.” By 2024, by contrast, almost a third of the more than 1,000 works in the museum’s collection are by women, just as the museum’s exhibition programme naturally includes women artists at the forefront of contemporary art. However, the situation is still far from ideal: while the majority of art students today are women, few of them have international careers or make a living solely from art.
With a selection of works from the museum’s collection, we would like to draw attention to all the outstanding artists from the late 1960s to the present day who, in the social context in which they live, – or despite it – created a valuable oeuvre that was unique and outstanding for the museum’s collection in Central and Eastern Europe.
Curator: Krisztina Szipőcs
Women’s Quota 01.: 18 October 2024 – 12 January 2025
Women’s Quota 02.: 24 January – 23 March 2025
