Enfilade

From AWARE (Archives of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions):

Women at Work: Collections in Museums of

Historical Art through the Lens of Gender

École du Louvre, Amphithéâtre Michel-Ange, Paris, 16–17 February 2026

Sandra Gamarra, Milagros, ca. 2008 (Courtesy of the artist).

In 2014, the Musée du Louvre held a lecture series, entitled Women Artists at the Museum? Current Perspectives. Building on this line of thought, the present symposium moves beyond acknowledging the under-representation of women artists in permanent collections: through a combination of theoretical approaches and real-world case studies, this symposium aims to explore the epistemological shift that must occur for women artists to take their rightful place in museum collections.

Museums play a key role in society as spaces of knowledge and, by extension, of power. By rendering objects visible and inscribing them within cultural narratives, museums contribute to creating dominant frameworks and, through them, collective imaginaries. Scholarship in art history, museology and, in particular, gender studies, challenges the existing hierarchies among artists, artworks and techniques, and critically examines the conditions under which artists trained and worked. This feminist approach, which also draws on postcolonial theory, is driving change in museum practices. By focusing on the permanent collections of historical art, an area still less studied from this angle than temporary exhibitions and modern or contemporary collections, this symposium will explore museum initiatives that generate new ways of seeing and understanding. Many historical art museums have launched research programmes, experimented with innovative display strategies, and developed new narratives and modes of transmission.

Such work challenges evaluation criteria grounded in the established canon and pushes back on the enduring myths and misconceptions that continue to shape art history. This naturally gives rise to pressing questions: Can gender studies play a role in fundamentally reconfiguring museums? Does a radical approach necessarily lose its force when articulated within an institutional setting? What initiatives of this kind, both past and present, have already been carried out, and with what outcomes?

Organised jointly by the non-profit organisation AWARE (Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions) and the Musée du Louvre Museum Studies and Research Support Department, this international symposium (Elles sont à l’œuvre: Les collections des musées d’art ancien au prisme du genre) will bring together curators, academics, and artists working at the intersection of art history, museology, and gender studies, to harness the transformative potential that this interdisciplinary space holds for building the museums of tomorrow.

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9.30  Welcome by Françoise Mardrus, Musée du Louvre, and Camille Morineau, AWARE, MNAM-Centre Pompidou

9.45  Introduction by Griselda Pollock, Feminist Art Historian, Professor Emerita, University of Leeds

10.30  Session 1 | Mapping Presence: Revisiting Permanent Collections
Moderator: Chương-Đài VÕ, Curator, Writer, Editor and Professor, ENSAPC
• Annabelle Ténèze, Director, Louvre-Lens Museum
• Ilaria Miarelli Mariani, Director, Museum of Rome and the Municipal Museums of the City of Rome, and Ilaria Arcangeli, Researcher
• Fabienne Dumont, Art Historian, Art Critic and Professor at Jean-Monnet-Saint-Etienne University
• Gloria Cortes, Heritage Curator at the Fine Arts Museum of Chile, in Spanish with consecutive translation into English

13.15  Lunch break

14.30  Session 2 | Beyond the Fine Arts: Hierarchies of Genre and Gender
Moderator: Stéphanie Deschamps-Tan, Heritage Curator, Musée du Louvre
• Andaleeb Badie Banta, Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
• Manon Lacaplain, Director and Heritage Curator, and Camille Belvèze, Heritage Curator, Musée Sainte-Croix, Poitiers
• Liliane Cuesta Davignon, Heritage Curator, González Martí National Museum of Ceramics and Decorative Arts
• Iris Moon, Associate Curator, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art

17.15  End of the first day

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9.30  Welcome by Carolina Hernández Muñoz, International networks project manager and coordinator, AWARE, and Matylda Taszycka, Head of Research Programmes, AWARE, MNAM-Centre Pompidou

9.45  Session 3 | Collections as Polysemous Spaces: Narrating Multiple Histories
Moderator: Clovis Maillet, Performance Artist and Medieval Historian
• Isabella Rjeille, Curator, Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand
• Stephanie Sparling Williams, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum
• Sandra Gamarra Heshiki, artist
• Pawel Leszkowicz, Art Historian and Professor of Contemporary Art and Curatorial Studies, Academy of Art, Szczecin
• Zorian Clayton, Curator of Prints, Victoria & Albert Museum

13.00  Lunch break

14.30  Session 4 | Networks and Transmission: Working Collectively
Moderator: Julie Botte, Musée du Louvre
• Charlotte Foucher Zarmanian, Art Historian and Research Director, CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research)
• Laurien van der Werff and Magdalena Roosje Anker, Heritage Curators and Co-Chairs of ‘Women of the Rijksmuseum’, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
• Noelia Perez Garcia, Research Director of El Prado en femenino, Prado Museum and Professor of Art History, University of Murcia, and Carlos González Navarro, Heritage Curator of 19th-Century Painting, Prado Museum
• Susanna Avery Quash, Senior Research Lead and Head of ‘Women in the Arts Forum’, National Gallery, London

17.15  Conclusion by Anne Lafont, Art Historian and Research Director at EHESS (School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences)