Undervalued: Is the Future of Art Female?

Until very recently, female artists have occupied a tiny space of the art market, undervalued and ignored. There are no women in the top 0.03% of the auction market, where 41% of the profit is concentrated. Overall, 96.1% of artworks sold at auction are by male artists. The most expensive work sold by a woman artist at auction, Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, sold in 2014 for $44.4 million—over four hundred million dollars less than the auction record for a male artist: Leonardo Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which sold in 2017 for $450.3 million, shattering the previous record of $179.4 million for a work by Picasso.

Now that’s changing. This year’s Venice Biennale was heavily skewed in favour of women for the first time ever. Historically, about 10% of artists in the main exhibition have tended to be women, rising to 30% in recent years; in 2019, the UK-based curator Ralph Rugoff’s exhibition achieved rough parity for the first time. Cecilia Alemani, curator of the 2022 Biennale, included approximately 90% female and gender non-conforming artists.

Who is driving this change? And how do we continue to make sure the work of female artists is given the recognition they deserve? Join Kamal Ahmed as he explores the role of women in the contemporary art market with art historian and broadcaster Katy Hessel, art historian and founder of ArtscapesUK Rose Balston, art market specialist Bojana Popovic, entrepreneur Marine Tanguy and patron and academic Princess Alia Al-Senussi.

The Futureverse is brought to you by Intelligence Squared in partnership with Y TREE. The past is in your head. The future is in your hands. For more information visit y-tree.com/futureverse.

The Story of Art without Men by Katy Hessel

Rose Balston’s ‘Old Mistresses’ lecture series

Event – The Value Revolution: Reimagining Worth

How do we define value? How has this changed over time? And who has a say over what is deemed valuable or worthless? For centuries, society has seen value mainly through an economic lens: one takes a job because of its monetary benefits; marriage is a financially beneficial relationship to enable stability; and the true test of a business is its profit at the end of the year.

But is this changing? In recent years, factors such as climate change, social justice and the pandemic have forced us to reconsider how we define value. Our second event in the Futureverse series in partnership with Y TREE will cover some of the most pressing questions of today: Will technologies democratise finance? Can capitalism really adapt so that things other than monetary value are considered important in business, including fairness and environmental impact? And are we finally seeing a growing awareness that value cannot necessarily be quantified with a price tag? Some things, such as time, health, job satisfaction, and the survival of our planet are surely worth more than a number in a bank account.

In July 2022, we explored the Value Revolution through the eyes of former Financial Times columnist, now charity founder, author and maths and economics teacher Lucy Kellaway OBE; Adrienne Buller, author of The Value of a Whale, the book that examines the truth of “green capitalism”; and banker, co-creator and host of the award-winning Money Maze podcast, Simon Brewer. Chairing the discussion was be Jon Sopel, award-winning journalist, broadcaster and author.