Out of the picture: A multilevel framework of gender disparities in art

Why do women artists remain a minority in museum collections and art markets, decades after becoming the majority in art schools? Talent does not explain it, since creative ability shows no meaningful gender differences, and audiences cannot tell an artist's gender from the work itself. The gap persists, we argue, because it is produced by a system rather than at any single stage of artwork production, selection, and reception. We therefore introduce a multilevel framework that treats the art world as an ecosystem. Artists, gatekeepers, and audiences act on artworks within three embedded levels of analysis (individual, institutional, and societal), and gender enters the ecosystem not only through these actors but also through the gendered content of artworks and the norms of the wider society. Actors, artworks, and norms interact across levels and over time. Societal beliefs in male artistic genius are internalized by artists and audiences and enacted by gatekeeping institutions; biased selections accumulate into a male canon; and the canon feeds that belief back to the next generation. The ecosystem is thus recursive, reproducing inequality without requiring discriminatory intent. Yet the same loop invites contestation, and excluded artists have answered with concealment, counter-institutions, and activism. Integrating evidence scattered across disciplines, this review derives a research agenda that treats the feedback loop, rather than any single stage, as the unit of analysis and as the lever of change.