As the final installment of the “Women, Arts and Social Change” program hosted by the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in its 2023-2024 season, the museum invited Schwanda Rountree and Myrtis Bedolla to speak at an event titled “Fresh Talk: Influence and Collecting.” The event discussed the progress and challenges faced by women and non-binary people in the art industry, specifically in curating and collecting.

Entering the museum on a sweltering summer’s day typical of DC, I was met with a cool museum breeze and directed to the third floor of the building. There, attendees could wander around the permanent collection until programming began. Specific spaces on the floor were dedicated to particular colors, with one of the rooms’ panels describing its purple contents. Traditionally associated with nobility and wealth, purple had adopted a new meaning here, defying tradition by centering women in its commentary on power and speaking for the museum at large.

In this event, women were at the forefront of discussing female representation in the art industry — representation as artists, curators, museum board members, and beyond. Rountree, for example, is a curator-turned-independent art adviser who also serves on several boards and committees, including the Collections Committee of the Ackland Art Museum and the Accessions Committee of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Bedolla, on the other hand, is the founder and owner of Galerie Myrtis, a gallery located in Baltimore that specializes in twentieth and twenty-first-century pieces, particularly those by African American artists. As the panelists began discussing their pathways into collection and curation, Bedolla spoke of her father, a musician by trade with a passion for art who had served as her inspiration.

“He always claimed that he did not collect anyone famous,” Bedolla told the audience. “He just went about with great intention, buying original art that my sister and I enjoyed living with.”

Bedolla and Rountree expanded on the theme of intentionality through the remainder of their conversation. When the Museum asked about the ethics of collecting art primarily as a tool for investment, the two panelists emphasized their dedication to selecting museum-worthy works. For them, adding to the artistic canon was far more important than merely purchasing pieces that would appreciate over time.

Rountree said she also engaged in intentional curation by organizing her collections around central themes. While at first, the pieces she collected were unified merely because they had all been produced by female artists, new themes slowly began to emerge and develop, with Rountree identifying beauty and labor as two ideas very present in her collected works.

Fresh Talk: Influencing and Collecting discussion at the National Museum of Women in the Arts; Photo by Derek Baker

A recurring topic that emerged throughout the discussion was access and its impact on various groups within the art community. Bedolla pointed out that female artists often receive lower valuations than their male peers. This disparity is primarily caused by limited gallery representation and a scarcity of sales data for their work. Bedolla argues that analyzing large datasets of art sales could provide valuable insights into the year-to-year performance of female artists in the market. People focus on accessibility for artists, but they don’t think about accessibility for collectors and [about] being blocked during that process, said Rountree.

Often, art waitlists lack transparency, and the industry is still plagued by an elitism that allows curators with the same credentials to see vastly different results based on their connections. I learned a piece of art jargon at the event that perfectly highlights this sentiment: “ghost waitlists.” They describe waitlists that only exist in theory to dress the process in an air of fairness when, in reality, the artwork is merely sold to the networked buyer.

Roundtree built on the conversation of curatorial access by sharing a personal experience. A few years ago at a gallery, she was blatantly ignored by a staff member who assumed, based on her race and age, that she couldn’t afford the artwork. Ironically, she was there to make a purchase for a client with unlimited funds.

Undeterred by access limitations, Bedolla and Rountree have leveraged their success to empower women and nonbinary artists. This exemplifies the mutually beneficial dynamic between a growing female presence in the art market and the rise of female artists in museums. Bedolla and Rountree’s dedication to amplifying women’s voices takes many forms: they actively collect works by female artists, provide financial support during the creation process, and, as board members, advocate for the artists’ inclusion on museum walls.

“I think curators are very interesting because they are muses. I think they inspire scholarship,” Rountree shared. “It’s about providing a voice. A voice in a space with desolation and a void, quite frankly.”

In this sense, curators choose the pieces and artists that enter the canon of time and, therefore, decide which stories we — the public — get to hear. For Bedolla and Rountree, this means not only highlighting artwork by women, depicting women but also pieces that deal with themes and stories central to the female experience.

Rountree showed the audience an art piece from her collection entitled Two Years and Counting by Nina Chanel Abney. The painting depicts a male basketball player dressed in blue playing against a pink background. In the image, he is perspiring blue-colored sweat, suggesting a transference of masculinity onto the feminine, pink background. The piece seems to hint at what Rountree describes as a “masculine dominant energy.”

People like Bedolla and Rountree can also bring these themes and artists to museums, allowing for a third type of access that serves the public beyond the personal collections of wealthy individuals.

Rountree recounted her decision to donate a painting she had recently acquired by Ruth Owens to the Ackland Museum, not because she didn’t want it on her walls, but because she saw a void in the museum's collection of works by Black female artists.

“I understand also, as a collector first, what it means to be a patron,” said Rountree. “It’s my responsibility to make sure that the scholarship lives and thrives through the work, through programming, and donating to museums.”

Sofia Gaviria Partow is an undergraduate student at Yale University, studying Economics with a certificate in Arabic.

At NMWA, Panelists Explore Intentionality and Access in Art Curation