Exploring the Gender Gap in Art Museums

This article explores the gender gap in art museums around the world to find out if discrimination exists in the field. It particularly focuses on the gender of the artist at the most highly attended independent exhibitions, using a dataset compiled by The Art Newspaper. In addition to assessing the number of male and female exhibitions, and the daily attendance based on gender, this paper utilizes county demographic infromation from around the United States collected by the Census Bureau to discuss the potential impact of area demographics on the gender of the artist chosen to display his or her artwork. This paper confirms that among the most popular exhibitions there are more male than female art exhibitions throughout the world. None of the demographics associate with gender of the artists of the exhibition; given this finding, it seems that the gender gap is not market driven and discrimination may exist in the art industry. To further explain this hypothesis, more studies on the gender gap need to be undertaken. Perhaps the demographics and rationale of the museum boards can explain the gender gap in the art industry