Female collectors have shaped art history for centuries, even if they don’t always get the credit they deserve. Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt more than 3,500 years ago, commissioned art as a key part of her leadership strategy. Fast forward a few thousand years—both the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York were founded by women.
Over the years, CULTURED has interviewed a wide range of influential female collectors who have shaped culture and identified artists before they hit it big, from Nedda Young to Komal Shah. As part of our Women’s History Month collecting series, we’ve pulled together excerpts from past interviews in which tastemaking women identify the female artists they are most excited about.
"Cristina de Miguel, Caroline Absher, Ana Benaroya, HyeGyeong Choi, Nadia Waheed, and Leigh Ruple are all creating works that are explosive with energy and emotion. Anaja Hvastija Gaia and Nadia Ayari give me the feeling of lyrical poetry. I love the painting and embroidery of Rugiyatou Ylva Jallow."
"I’m always so excited to see Arghavan Khosravi’s new work. Everything she does blows me away. I’m really into the unlikely combination of the unexpected, the dimensions, and the vibrant color palette she employs. The way she marries her fine art with hard, unexpected materials, like a lock and chain or a cage, is so creative. Her work is very thought-provoking."
"The core ideas that spring from Brooklyn-based artist Mika Tajima’s practice have taken up residency in my psyche unlike any other artist. I am lucky to live with a large example from the artist’s 'Negative Entropy' series, which I collected in 2021 during her solo show in London with Simon Lee Gallery.
The work is a visual representation of an audio recording of a cryopump at a fusion energy facility. Tajima uses an industrial jacquard loom to weave spectrograms of audio files she records in places that create, numb, harness, or are otherwise concerned with energy—from monasteries to data centers. I find the work very punk, in that it’s wrapped up in aesthetic (with a wink) compositions that lend an almost analgesic, dissociative effect—encapsulating the malaise of being alive today in a technocratic society rife with spiritual capitalism."
"Marguerite Humeau is someone I’m fascinated with at the moment, especially the new project she did in Colorado that typifies the Land art genre. Her bronze sculptural and sound-based works about 'transience and resilience, life and death' with one root system is just what the world needs right now. It’s a nod to our local aspen trees with one root system [and] embraces and unites the community."
"South African artist Lulama Wolf. I’m obsessed with her work, and she’s an incredible human. Her Instagram profile says, 'Vividly playing with my senses.' I can’t describe it better than that! Her work is a beautiful language."
"Kate Mosher Hall is a very young artist who just opened a show in Los Angeles; and Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, from Mexico, will be included in the Venice Biennale this year."
"Nafis White and Natalie Ball. I already have a piece of hers, but she’ll be coming to town to do a residency at Iris Projects so I am looking forward to that. Also, Tiffany Alfonseca."
"I’m obsessed with Esther Mahlangu, a South African geometrical abstract artist, who paints designs used in the Ndebele tribe."
"I’m super into Tidawhitney Lek, a Cambodian-American artist represented by my friends at Sow & Tailor. Figurative painting is obviously having a huge moment, and I love the energy, vibrancy, and subtle subversiveness of her work."
"I am absolutely smitten with the instinctive painterly work of Adrianne Rubenstein."
