In the Belarusian section of the country’s National Art Museum, data from 2023 indicate the presence of works by 1340 male and 940 female artists. Given the numerous barriers women faced in achieving professional recognition until the mid-twentieth century, these numbers may seem relatively balanced. Yet a closer look into the museum’s archives — particularly when the collection is broken down by genre — reveals a more complex reality.

The museum’s painting collection remains heavily dominated by male artists, while women are more frequently represented in decorative and applied arts — fields that are less often displayed in museums. As a result, visitors primarily encounter works created by men. This imbalance creates what could be called the “silence of women” in the museum. Women artists are present, and in considerable numbers, but the spaces where their voices are most clearly heard remain at the margins rather than at the centre of the exhibition. 

Why does this remain the case? The first analytical essay of The Line project seeks to find out.

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Article content:

• Academy
• Home, Family, Art Studio
• Rules of the Game
• Money and International Context
• Instead of Conclusion

The essay draws on five interviews with experts in museum studies and art history, whose names remain undisclosed.

Academy

In Belarus, the path to a professional artistic career usually begins at the Academy of Arts. Yet even at this initial stage, as one expert notes, female students face unequal opportunities compared to their male peers.

“Each year, the departments of painting, sculpture, monumental and decorative arts, and graphics admit six students to state-funded places and a few more to paid ones. Frankly, painting has recently lost its former popularity and its status as the “flagship” discipline. Consequently, competition has decreased (with fewer men applying), so the number of female applicants in the department is rising. Monumental and decorative art and graphics are considered more prestigious, being more practice- and income-oriented. There, competition is tougher, and it is harder for women to get in,” notes the interviewee, DSc.

Other museum experts and professors add that if a female student takes maternity leave, the department risks losing part of its funding — one of the main reasons women are still viewed as a “risky” choice for admission. Thus, in today’s Belarus, women face disadvantages from the very beginning of their path in the very field that shapes the traditional museum canon.

An archive photo of the building of the Academy of Arts of Belarus. The signature on the back reads: "Minsk Financial Technical School. 1954". Now this building is known as the Belarusian Academy of Arts, and in the early 50s it was built as a new building of the Financial Technical School. Photo - kalektar.org 

How does this situation compare to how women pursue art degrees abroad? Unlike in Belarus, European universities operate under entirely different systems of education and funding. In Belarus, the state finances a certain number of state-funded places for bachelor's programs, and the university is required to fulfil this enrolment plan. For example, in Sweden, there is no "enrolment plan" by major: places are not distributed by the ministry, and universities themselves determine how many students they can accept, without a centralised quantitative state mandate. Furthermore, in Western Europe in general, universities receive targeted grants for research and can be supported by private foundations, companies, and philanthropists.

In 2024, according to Statistics Sweden, 77% of the 2900 people who began studies in the fields of art and culture were women, compared to 23% men. Since the introduction of these programs in 2015, this gender ratio has remained stable, with women consistently making up about three-quarters of all students. Moreover, women have a higher competition rate in art education, 83% compared to 74% among men.

An archive photo from the group exhibition "Lessons of Bad Art", organized by Belarusian artist Igor Tishyn (then a teacher at the A. Glebov Minsk Art School), which exhibited the works of students expelled at the time from the Belarusian Academy of Arts and the A. Glebov School. Photo - kalektar.org 

Home, Family, Art Studio

Even after obtaining art degrees, many female artists eventually leave the profession. Artistic fields such as painting and sculpture require constant practice and access to dedicated studio space, that are often sacrificed by women once family responsibilities take over. Social expectations reinforce this dynamic: childcare and domestic duties fall primarily on women, while men remain largely unburdened. As a result, numerous women artists fade from public view — their input is absorbed into the supportive roles they play in men’s artistic careers.

Zinaida Astapovich-Bacharova with her brother Arkady Astapovich / 1920s / Previously, Zinaida Astapovich was often written about in comparison with her brother, and once upon a time, her description was limited only to her family connection with Arkady Astapovich. However, over time, the artist managed to leave her mark in the history of Belarusian art. Now Zinaida's talent is obvious not only to her loved ones, but also to critics and art historians.

 While no comparable statistics on this issue exist for Belarus, research from other countries confirms this pattern. In the UK, the Balancing Acts survey (2019), which gathered responses from over a thousand participants, showed that 43% of women working in the arts and responsible for childcare would extend their working hours if adequate childcare services were available. Data from 2018 adds to this picture: 79% of women in the UK identified as primary caregivers, compared to just 16% of men. In Artnet’s “Hardwiring Change” study, 93.4% of artists reported that caregiving duties affected their career choices: 29% significantly changed their employment after having children, while 8% turned down career advancement due to family obligations. Taken together, these figures reveal that women are far more likely to bear the cost of choosing between career and care.

Mary Kelly. Postpartum Protocol. 1973-1979. Documentation VI: Letter, Commentary, and Diary / Experimentum Mentis VI: (On the Persistence of Letters) (fragment), 1978–1979. Image source: publisher's website admarginem.ru

Rules of the Game

An essential aspect of analysing the issue of the “silence of women” is understanding how artworks are selected for inclusion in museum collections. To illustrate this process, it is useful to compare the mechanisms of art acquisition currently used in France and Belarus. 

In France, the procedure generally follows this sequence:

1. A gallery, curator, or artist proposes a work for acquisition.
2. A specialised commission at the CNAP (the National Centre for Visual Arts) or the museum reviews the proposal and votes.
3. The museum director either approves the acquisition or refers it to a state committee if financial or political thresholds are exceeded.
4. The work is then included in the FNAC (the National Collection of Contemporary Art) inventory and may subsequently be transferred to a museum.

The members of the committee review the proposals and vote on potential acquisitions. They are appointed by the Ministry of Culture and represent academic, curatorial, and collector circles. Although criteria such as prestige, reputation, and budget inevitably shape their decisions, thus perpetuating institutional inertia, regional foundations such as the Fonds national d’art contemporain and CNAP programs actively support the contemporary art scene, enabling a more diverse range of acquisitions.

Fondsnational d’art contemporain – Paris Collections / Photo -  fondsartcontemporain.paris.fr  

In Belarus, the acquisition process is much more simplified and centralised. Since state museums lack independent financial resources, artworks can enter museum collections only after being proposed to the Ministry of Culture by the acquisition committee, composed of museum experts. The procedures for appointing committee members and the voting process, however, remain undisclosed, regulated by the museum's internal documentation. The final decision in the acquisition process rests with the Ministry of Culture, while the committee merely drafts the proposal (as stipulated by the Law of the Republic of Belarus of July 13, 2012, No. 419-Z “On Public Procurement of Goods). 

Titles and honours of artists often weigh heavily in acquisition decisions, and are therefore typically prioritised by both museum committees and the Ministry of Culture. This leads to women being less frequently represented in museum collections, as they more rarely attain official recognition.

Currently, there are no available data indicating how many works by male and female artists have been purchased for the Belarus National Art Museum. At the time of writing, neither the museum nor the Ministry of Culture publishes acquisition records on their official websites.

In Belarus, museum commissions are formally subordinate to the Ministry of Culture, while in France they maintain their own professional autonomy, with the state acting primarily as a financier and regulator of acquisition procedures.

Hall of the National Art Museum of Belarus / Photo from the room dedicated to Belarusian art of the 12th — 18th centuries. / Source: website of the National Art Museum.

 Paradoxically, women fill the museum halls - as Madonnas, mothers, muses, or allegories of nature - yet rarely as artists. Images of women remain objects of depiction rather than their creators. As early as 1989, Guerilla Girls (an American collective of anonymous feminist activists) observed: “less than 5% of artists in the sections of modern art are women, yet about 85% of the depicted nude bodies are female”. By 2021, the statistics had barely changed: “less than 4% of artists are women, but 76% of the nude bodies are female”.

Guerrilla Girls Rental "Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get into the Metropolitan Museum?" / 1989 / The Benton Museum acquired the image in 2016 / Source: benton.uconn.edu 

Money and International Context

Another key factor contributing to the “silence of women” lies in how culture is financed - usually on a residual basis, with art and culture funded only after more “urgent” priorities.

For instance, the National Art Museum of Belarus lacks the equipment required to properly exhibit decorative and applied arts - the fields where women are most represented - and the museum’s permanent exhibition spaces have not expanded in years. In contrast, major international museums such as the Centre Pompidou or Tate Modern regularly allocate entire halls and curatorial projects to decorative and contemporary art.

The Belarusian Academy of Arts faces similar financial constraints, which prevent it from responding flexibly to study interruptions. Perhaps for this reason, admission places are more often awarded to men, who are less likely to take parental leave. As some professors recall, “women go on maternity leave and then focus on kids and family, not on their artistic careers”. Statistics confirm this: in 2020, only 0.6% of all people on parental leave in Belarus were men, whereas in Sweden in 2019 this figure reached 46%. In this way, the “economic rationale” additionally deepens the gender imbalance in favour of men.

Jadwiga Rozdzialowska is an artist of Polish origin, who is considered one of the iconic figures of Molodechno. Photo source: zamosciopedia.pl 
She can be singled out as an example of a woman who, according to Polish researchers, was never able to graduate from the academy due to lack of money. Nevertheless, Rozdzialowska played an important role in the history of Belarusian art. She opened a private art school in Molodechno, which became a center of attraction for talented youth. Many local artists consider her their first teacher.

In financial terms, Belarus aligns with the global pattern. According to Artnet, between 2008 and 2019, nearly $197 billion was spent at contemporary art auctions worldwide, yet only $4 billion - around 2% - went towards works created by women. For comparison, during the same period, sales of Pablo Picasso’s works alone amounted to $4.8 billion, exceeding the total spent on all women artists in the dataset - a group of nearly 6000 women.

Data from Feminist Art Maps website reveals a similar imbalance: among the Louvre’s 35000 works displayed in its permanent collection, only 15 were created by women - a mere 0.04%.

Nevertheless, change has come more quickly within contemporary art galleries. When London’s Tate Modern opened its new Switch House building in 2016, female artists accounted for 36% of the displayed works - up from the previous 17%. These figures demonstrate that institutions continue to reproduce the usual canon, where men still occupy the leading positions.

The amount of artwork sold worldwide for the period January 2008 - May 2029 and the share of women's art sold in the total / infographic by Artnet.

Instead of Conclusion

The “silence of women” in Belarusian museums is not the result of malicious intent but rather a systemic issue - a consequence of specific institutional filters, stereotypes, and chronic underfunding. The situation closely resembles what British writer and scholar Germaine Greer described when explaining the title of her 1979 book “The Obstacle Race”: “Very few of these women painters could be called famous. They are not among those whom the public hails as “great”. They do not run the four-minute mile. Instead, they crawl through the swamps and ditches.”

Still, women’s names continue to appear in museum spaces  - as seen in the works of Zoja Litvinava and Valerjana Zoltok in the permanent exhibition, or in temporary and solo shows such as the recent retrospective of decorative art by Liudmila Miagkova.

Works by Lyudmila Myagkova / cover photo of the exhibition of the artist, who worked at the Belarusian glass factory "Neman" / photo from the website of the National Art Museum of Belarus.

 Today, to address this “silence”, we can visit museums, attend exhibitions, and engage critically with what we see from different perspectives - and read more. Belarusian art history needs research akin to Greer’s, capable of bringing back and restoring to visibility the forgotten, misattributed, and destroyed works created by women.

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