What’s on the minds of the art world’s most influential women? 

Forget about wanting ‘a seat at the table’ — Ava DuVernay urges women to build their own. ‘20 years [into my career], I’m constantly building that table,’ the Selma and When They See Us filmmaker said at the inaugural Making Their Mark Forum in Washington, D.C. Held from 5-7 March, the three-day convening, which Christie’s proudly supported, was conceived by California collector and philanthropist Komal Shah to centre female artists and leadership and advance gender equity in the arts. Having established ARRAY, an independent distribution company and social impact collective in 2011, DuVernay has become the highest grossing Black woman director in American box-office history. In the current cultural landscape, DuVernay advocated for ‘more people who are interested in new institutions, [rather than] being inside of the studios, the production companies, the networks, the streamers.’

With the Making Their Mark Forum, aptly held during Women’s History Month, Shah expertly crafted her own conference table, bringing to the stage an impressive assemblage of proverbial furniture-makers and dream-makers across creative industries. To bring her vision to life, Shah tapped Cecilia Alemani (Donald R. Mullen Jr. Director and Chief Curator, High Line Art in New York and Artistic Director of the 2022 Venice Biennale), as the forum’s Curatorial Director and Loring Randolph (Co-organiser, AWAW Artist Survey and Symposium 2025; Director of Talking Galleries New York 2022 and 2024) as Director. Joining keynote speakers, DuVernay, Dr. Chelsea Clinton and Jodie Foster, were artists known for their activist stances and boundary-pushing practices (Marilyn Minter, Joan Semmel, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Tschabalala Self, Andrea Bowers, amongst others), as well as educators, curators and museum directors from esteemed institutions, including the Brooklyn Museum, MoMA and D.C.’s National Portrait Gallery.

On 7 March, Christie’s CEO Bonnie Brennan also took the stage in a panel moderated by Art Intelligence Global founder Amy Cappellazzo about women artists in the global art market. Demonstrating the breadth of how the art ecosystem can support and provide more pathways for women artists throughout their careers, other topics discussed at the forum ranged from museum acquisitions and exhibition-making to models of mentorship and legacy planning.

‘When I began collecting, I truly did not set out to build a collection of women artists. I just followed my eye, I followed my curiosity, and I fell in love over and over again,’ said Shah during her opening remarks at the forum, which kicked off at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, where works from her husband Gaurav Garg’s and her personal collection are currently on view through 26 July. Shah, who now runs the Making Their Mark Foundation devoted to championing women artists, first took her collection public in 2023 with the Making Their Mark exhibition, a spectacular show curated by Alemani. After a whirlwind exhibition debut in New York City, drawing 50,000 visitors in four and a half months, the show has travelled to several American institutions and will continue touring through at least 2027. Shah’s experience has also empowered her to take her activism to the next level.

‘As I began building real relationships with the artists in the studios, hearing their stories, understanding the texture of their careers, I started to see a clear gender disparity in recognition, evaluation and perception. That realisation changed everything. What began as a passion for collecting, became a responsibility,’ she continued at the forum. ‘Over time I have come to understand that what was missing was not excellence. Excellence and exceptionalism are not just the purging of men — so the issue is not talent. The issue is the systems that decide what becomes visible, what is preserved, what is taught, what is acquired and ultimately what is making history.’

Below, discover additional thought-provoking takeaways from the forum’s diverse lineup of trailblazing speakers to inspire you during Women’s History Month and long after.

Dr. Kymberly Pinder on the importance of questioning the artists that we aren’t learning about

‘I want our students to always be questioning what we’re feeding them, and for me to be honest about that you’re getting a perspective from me of art history, and that means you should ask your other teachers what their perspective is. I’d say in the studio, one of the things that we really focus on, also in my art history classes, is to ask “What is not there?” So, I often have assignments in my classes where students have to go out and find something that’s not in the class, and that also emphasises that they can also be controlled and control the narrative.’ — Dr. Kymberly Pinder, Ph.D., Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean, Yale School of Art

‘My work does not treat shame as something to avoid. I aim to drag it into the light. I zoom in so you can’t look away…I’ve always resisted moralistic readings of female desire and presentation. After all, nobody has politically correct fantasies. I was noticing all throughout art history, you never saw women, well you saw soft-core women, but you never hardcore images made by women, or any sexual image really made by women. And I thought, “Why is that? Why aren’t we allowed to have images for our amusement or our own pleasure?”’ — Marilyn Minter, artist

Dr. Sarah Lewis on artist Elizabeth Murray’s gendered critiques

‘Elizabeth Murray taught me so much…she was frustrated about the description of her work because the description was always about domestic imagery or objects in kitchens. She said, “Cézanne painted cups and saucers and apples, and no one ever assumed he spent a lot of time in the kitchen. The Cubist painted still lifes, but when I paint the still life, the critique of my work is that I’m making this feminist statement about the home, and that critique is political.’” — Dr. Sarah Lewis, Founder, Vision & Justice; John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities and Associate Professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard University

Bonnie Brennan on preserving women’s value on the art market for a sustained impact

‘So much of the art world feels opaque to the larger world. It doesn’t feel like everybody has the same data to work with, and that’s what we’re trying to do when expanding our platforms. We wanted to bring more transparency to what the market looks like for underrepresented artists and female artists, so five years ago we started our 21st-century art platform [in part] inspired by this mission… though one has to be very careful to be a guardian, particularly for those young artists…We’ve got to let there be a proper runway. I feel that it’s a much better time to be a female artist right now than it was five years ago, but we still have a long, long way to go.’ — Bonnie Brennan, Christie’s Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Chelsea Clinton on her She Persisted children’s book series and the importance of female protagonists

‘It became really important to me when I became a parent, not only of a daughter but also of a son, and when I really became perceptive to how gendered children’s books are…I urge you to go to your family libraries at home or wherever you may be spending time with the small humans in your life and look at the books that feature cows or frogs or ducks or cats or dogs. They, too, are overwhelmingly male. It’s George, it’s Frank, it’ Frederick, it’s Thomas. And so I became quite activated as I was looking to grow our family library...I really wanted to bring more of the women who’ve meant so much to me, through my teachers, the stories that my parents, my grandparents, shared with me into our home and then hopefully also into other people’s homes.’ — Dr. Chelsea Clinton, Vice Chair, Clinton Foundation

Kaywin Feldman on the challenging realities of museum-acquisition policies

‘I think the museum average is that at least 80% of our collections comes through gifts, not from purchase, which means we’re dependent on what collectors collect. Unfortunately there aren’t enough Komal Shahs out there collecting work by women artists and artists who have been traditionally underrepresented in our collections…a real challenge [is] how we work to bring our boards and our patrons and our collectors along, so that our galleries do look like the nation and the world.’ — Kaywin Feldman, Director, The National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.)

Joan Semmel on agency, self-imaging and the lasting power of her subversive œuvre

‘My self-images have been very well known and very often classified as self-portraits, and they’re not self-portraits. They’re not about me as a person. They’re about how one understands one’s own body and how one can inhabit one’s own body in a way that is complete, that encompasses one’s physicality, one’s sexuality and also one’s vulnerability as a strength, not necessarily as a problem.’ — Joan Semmel, artist

Jodie Foster on the wisdom that comes with age and the key to being your most creative self

‘There’s a usefulness to being able to finally examine your life and to be authentically who you are in that moment without the need to perform milestones for people, and I think there’s a relaxation that comes from that. So if there’s any wisdom that I give to people who are actors, for example, or artists who are coming up…I’m usually the guy who says, “don’t worry about that.” Because what I’ve found is the biggest obstacle to creativity, the biggest obstacle to doing your best work, is worrying.’ — Jodie Foster, actor and director