About Marion Kleinschmidt
Marion Kleinschmidt holds an MA in Comparative Literature and Political Science from Germany, where she was born and raised. Since April 2024, she has been supporting the Athena Marketing and Social Media Teams.
Thank you to all who participated in our March 2025 Arts Equity Trivia! The winners are:
- Emily Sanders, Denver CO
- Diana Pinheiro, Portugal
- Ashley Quach, California
Congratulations on winning a ticket to our Cocktails & Comedy fundraising event on May 8th!
Trivia Answers
Please note: The rights to all images rest with the artist and the art piece’s owner.
When discussing these artworks, we focus on the male/female gender divide, because all Trivia artists fall into these categories. We look forward to discussing art by nonbinary creators in the future!
You can still see the Trivia questions HERE. Athena’s Arts Equity Trivia ran from March 11-18, 2025, and was shared in our newsletter (subscribe at the bottom of our main webpage) and on our social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn where we discuss each Trivia artwork with you.
Art Piece 1 – Extra Large – Household Gloss Paint on Canvas
Midtown 1211 (Rockefeller Plaza) by Sarah Morris
Artist identifies as female
Price Category: $100,000-250,000
70% of participants correctly guessed the creator to be female. Almost 80% underestimated the artwork’s price category. Interestingly, there was a particularly high correlation between guesses for a male creator and low points on wishing to buy this piece of art.
Sarah Morris is renowned for her geometric abstract paintings and conceptual films. Her artwork often explores the psychology and physicality of urban environments. She uses bold, hard-edged geometric patterns and vigorous colors, drawing inspiration from architecture, cityscapes, and the dynamics of urban life.
sarahmorris.com
Art Piece 2 – Large – Acrylic on Paper
Artist identifies as male
Price Category: $100,000-250,000
70% of participants incorrectly guessed this to be work by a woman artist (possibly because of its organic shapes and purplish colors?). 73% also strongly underestimated its value. And yet, it was voted the second favorite piece among all participants.
Sam Francis is celebrated for his contributions to Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting. He often employed techniques like dripping, splattering, and layering paint, creating pieces that feel both spontaneous and meticulously crafted.
Art Piece 3 – Extra Large – Dye on Stretched Nylon
Artist identifies as male
Price Category: $100,000-250,000
60% of participants thought this art piece was created by a woman artist, possibly because it represents a woman, but withholds realistic facial features? The majority of price guesses fell below the actual price category.
Julian Opie’s innovative approach blends traditional artistic themes with digital aesthetics, Pop Art influences and classical portraiture, often reducing female figures to simplified forms.
Art Piece 4 – Large – Ink and Acrylic on Canvas
Tusayan by Max Cole
Artist identifies as female
Price Category: $10,000-100,000
This art piece’s stern geometrical and monochrome nature might have swayed roughly 70% of participants to incorrectly guess a male creator. A majority guessed the price range correctly. Among the pieces that are NOT widely known, this piece received the highest number of guesses in the top price category of $250,000-500,000.
Max Cole is renowned for her minimalist and abstract painting style, characterized by repetitive vertical lines and subtle tonal variations. Her work often explores themes of infinity, time, and meditative focus. Using a restrained palette, typically in shades of gray, black, and white, her paintings evoke a sense of depth and transcendence.
Max Cole on Artnet
Art Piece 5 – Small – Lithograph and Watercolor on Paper
Artist identifies as male
Price Category: $10,000-100,000
This piece stands out, because participants were undecided on the creator’s gender, with only a slight majority opting for a man. A strong majority of guessers placed it in the lowest price category, possibly because of its size, medium and whimsical nature. It was the best-liked piece of all!
“25 Cats Name(d) Sam and One Blue Pussy” is a privately printed, limited edition artist’s book, featuring Andy Warhol’s signature blotted-line watercolor drawings of cats in vibrant pop-art colors as well as calligraphy by Julia Warhola, his mother.
See the books’ story at the Marginalian
Art Piece 6 – Medium – Serigraph in Color
Artist identifies as male
Price Category: Under $10,000
A small majority of participants correctly guessed a male artist for this famous and iconic piece. Pricing guesses fell equally across all categories. It received the highest number of guesses in the top price range, although it is located in the lowest.
The LOVE design has been reproduced in various formats, including sculptures, paintings, and even a U.S. postage stamp. The first monumental LOVE sculpture was created in 1970 and is now housed at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Art Piece 7 – Large – Found Objects
Not bought or for sale
We threw this playful arrangement in just for fun, because it features among the actual art pieces in the collector’s home. As it turns out, over 80% of participants correctly identified the creator as female, possibly because of the fashion-related theme?
A vast majority placed it in the $10,000-100,000 price category (with very few guesses compared to other art pieces for the Under $10,000 category), which evidences the fact that beauty and value strongly connect in our minds through context.
Art Piece 8 – Medium – Silk Screen Print on Curtis Rag Paper
Artist identifies as male
Price Category: $250,000-500,000
Most participants guessed the artist here correctly as male – Warhol’s self-portraits are among his most well-known works. But 70% underestimated the piece’s value, possibly because it is a print on paper? In the collector’s home, “Double Andy” inhabits a prime position and gets to watch a lot of golf!
And this brings us to the final reveal:
The anonymous collector of all above art pieces is a woman living in the USA. The majority of participants, however, bet on a male collector.
What do we learn about buyer’s bias?
From our anonymous collector we learned that she didn’t choose the pieces by Sarah Morrison and Max Cole because of the artists’ gender but because of the artworks’ visual appeal and high (and consistently appreciating) value. She happens to prefer bold, vibrant styles and geometric or simplified shapes. And these two women artists master exactly that. Generally speaking, collectors do not necessarily pay attention to an artist’s gender or identity markers.
Buyers of top range art see few available works by women artists
The auction houses where our collector procured many of these and other art pieces – Sotheby’s Christie’s and Phillips de Pury – only sell around 2-4% works by female artists. (Studies show that around 25-50% of artists represented in local galleries are women, depending on the region and gallery focus.)
Underrepresentation is a vicious cycle
For a range of systemic reasons, women artists struggle to get represented, seen and their work sold. As a consequence, buyers (subconsciously) consider women’s art inferior. Moreover, buyers of top-tier art tend to view their purchases as investments. And since art by men traditionally fetches higher prices at auction, more of it enters auction houses and is traded at higher bidding prices. And so the imbalance self-perpetuates …
Trivia answers seem to confirm buyer’s bias
- The art pieces receiving the highest price range guesses were predominantly assumed to be created by male artists.
- Artworks showing organic shapes and vibrant colors caused more participants to expect a female creator (while most of these in our Trivia happened to be created by male artists).
- The art piece that received the most male artist guesses as well as the highest price guesses (apart from ultra-famous piece 8) displays the most stern and sombre aura – but was created by a woman (Max Cole).
- Bias remains tricky to confirm, as everyone’s Trivia guesses were influenced by numerous factors, such as the artwork’s size, medium and framing. Plus, participants might have known the pieces or reacted to underlying expectations regarding this Trivia.
We’d love to hear the reasons for your guesses on social media!
Representation of women in galleries and museums and overall sales are slowly on the rise. The fact that art by women is undervalued actually makes it an attractive investment: Research shows that artworks by women sell for approximately 42% less than those by men, but appreciate at a rate of about 29% annually, compared to 8% for male artists (see sources below).
We are experiencing a mass transfer of assets from Baby Boomers to younger generations, who are overall more interested in artists’ identity markers. Last year’s Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting reported that the proportion of art by women in the collections of high-net-worth individuals has already increased significantly, from 33% in 2018 to 44% in 2023. This indicates that we can hope for a whole new self-perpetuating trend!
What can each of us do for greater equity in the visual arts?
If you took this Trivia, look at your own answers, which we emailed back to you, and consider where unconscious gender bias might have played a role in your responses. You can also comment on the Trivia art pieces, as we discuss them on social media. When confronted with a (new) piece of art, be it visual art, a play or a piece of music, try and find out the artist’s gender.
Hype the work of female (and otherwise marginalized) artists you love
Tell other people about the non-male artists you love and discover new ones at exhibits that show them. Follow Athena’s #WomenCrushWednesday posts and nominate some crushes. Thanks to algorithms, artists of any gender can now gain outstanding success by going viral.
Buy and show art by female artists
If you can afford to buy original art, why not focus on female artists? They might be harder to find; however, each purchase of an original work, print, poster, calendar or postcard helps increase the visibility of female artists.
Visit art galleries and platforms that show female art
Some galleries in the Denver Metro area that (often) feature women artists are:
40 West Arts
Seesaw Art Gallery
Walker Fine Art
Union Hall Denver
Center for Visual Art – Metropolitan State University of Denver
Many digital platforms promote visual art created by women artists:
Agora Digital Art
Women in the Visual Arts
National Museum of Women in the Arts
Last but not least, the Guerilla Girls movement highlights everything this blog post talks about and more by means of attention-grabbing events and campaigns.
Further Reading and Sources
Are women artists finally getting their due? | Art Basel
This is the most recent article, which in January 2025 clearly takes a more optimistic stance than the slightly more dated articles below – which however provide excellent analyses of the root causes for the persisting underrepresentation of women in the visual arts.
Why Is Work by Female Artists Still Valued Less Than Work by Male Artists? | Artsy
The $192 Billion Gender Gap In Art
Stuck in the Dark Ages: A Woman’s Place in the Art World — MADE IN BED Magazine