Art Zealous

Nine Women Killing It in the Art World

By Lorraine Rubio

May 17, 2016 

As anyone working in the arts knows too well, nothings come easy for people with new ideas. This is especially true for women trying to get their ideas out in the art world. It’s a known fact that the visual arts have a discouraging lack of female presence. Pussy Galore’s 2015 update to Guerilla Girl’s 1986 “Report Card” reported that a majority of Chelsea galleries still have artist rosters largely favoring men. Major institutions, including MoMA, have a long history of gender inequality— in between 2008 and 2015 only one woman, Ann Temkin, stood as a department head.

Below you’ll find a group of nine incredible women who made their way to the forefront of visual art. The common thread in their stories is smashing out of the box, be it through a new to approach the gallery show experience or breaking through the overcrowded social media landscape to reinvent a New York historical intuition. Give it up for the ladies.

Beatrice Galilee

A prolific curator hailing from London, Galilee is the first ever fulltime curator of design and architecture at the Met. Brought on to hail in the Met Breuer in 2014, she took the reigns in the building’s facelift. Before the Met, she curated three international exhibitions before the age of 30, including the 2013 Lisbon Architecture Triennale and the 2011 Gwangju Design Biennale.

JiaJia Fei

Accurately dubbed the ‘Peggy Guggenheim of the internet’, it’s hard to miss this eye catching digital media maven who has pioneered art institutions’ taking to social media channels. In 2016, Fei graduated from associate director of digital marketing at the Guggenheim into the newly created role of Director of Digital at the Jewish Museum.

Joey Lico

Taking an active role in inspiring and activating a new generation of collectors and museum patrons, Joey Lico is an independent curator and the director of programming for The Cultivist. She is currently an advisor for the Whitehouse on their ACT/ART Committee, bridging public policy and contemporary art.

Kimberly Drew

Inspired by her love of black art and experience as an intern in director’s office at the Studio Museum in Harlem and, Kimberly Drew began to educate her friends and followers on her personal Instagram account @museummammy. 97,000 followers later and after launching educational blog Black Contemporary Art Tumblr, Drew is at the epicenter of art in the digital space.

Aida Muluneh

Ethiopian photographer Aida Muluneh’s portraits of her self and stand in models carry a fine balance of composure and jubilant color. Symbolic references come from her heritage, experiences as a photojournalist at the Washington Post, and world travels from Yemen to Cyprus.

Alexandra Chemla

Five years ago, at age 23 Alexandra Chemla, a gallery assistant at the time, launched the app ArtBinder to refine the gallery experience. Intended to reduce waste and countless hours of binder upkeep, the app compiles releases and information for galleries in over 60 countries.

Tze Chun

After graduating from Columbia University in 2006, Tze Chun broke out of the walls of the traditional NYC gallery in 2011 with the launch of online gallery Uprise Art. Meant to target emerging collectors and cut out the exclusivity of brick and mortar galleries, the expansive offering includes price points from $100 to $15,000.

Rachel Libeskind

Rachel Libeskind (daughter of starchitect Daniel Libeskind) ruminates on immigration, identity, and ritual in her performance art with pieces, including “The Traveling Bag” at the Chelsea Hotel in 2015, where she continually packed and unpacked a suitcase.

Noreen K. Ahmad-Director, Sutton PR

A strategy dynamo, Ahmad has risen through to the position of director at Sutton PR through experiences at PR and strategy firms Fitz &Co and La Placa Cohen. She shares the wealth of her knowledge as an adjunct professor at New York University and the Sotheby’s Institute.

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