Who Gets to Be Heard in the Arts?
Who Gets to Be Heard in the Arts?
with Camille Bacon, Philo Cohen and Amandine Nana
By Anna Prudhomme
The art world has long been dominated by a narrow, homogenous narrative. Charlotte Burns, an independent journalist, and Julia Halperin, a former Artnet News editor, launched a report to examine the representation of African American and female artists, revealing persistent inequalities and slow progress in combating racism and sexism in both U.S. museums and the global art market. The 2022 report shows that between 2008 and 2020, only 11% of artworks acquired by U.S. museums were by female-identifying artists, 2.2% by Black American artists, and just 0.5% by Black American women—far below their share of the U.S. population.
Building a more inclusive art world—one that addresses systemic barriers—requires actively confronting inequality and creating safe environments. To change this reality, deliberate action must be taken to broaden narratives, embrace diverse perspectives, and ensure everyone has a platform to share their stories. Inclusion isn’t passive,it requires dismantling long-lasting biases and building structures that reflect the world’s diversity.
Artistic representation isn’t just about showing diversity—it’s about reshaping narratives to reflect the full spectrum of human experience. True inclusion rejects tokenism—symbolic gestures of diversity that fail to drive meaningful change. To achieve change, we must rethink curatorial practices, funding structures, and leadership roles to embed inclusion at every level of decision-making. It also means creating space for artists to share their realities, challenge stereotypes, and inspire change.
When marginalized voices take center stage, the arts become a powerful vehicle for empathy, understanding, and transformation. It is vital to create an art world that reflects the richness and complexity of human experience. Only by fully embracing diversity can the arts evolve into a space where every voice matters.
We asked three leaders in the art world how they define visibility, identify systemic barriers, and measure progress.
CAMILLE BACON
Chicago-based writer and co-Editor-in-Chief of Jupiter Magazine, Camille Bacon is cultivating a "sweet Black writing life" inspired by poet Nikky Finney and the rich legacy of Black feminist thought. Her work shines a light on the wayward ingenuity of the Black creative spirit and explores how contemporary art can spark deeper collective reorientation towards relation, connection and intimacy and away from apathy and amnesia.
PHILO COHEN
Philo Cohen is a publisher, researcher, and creative consultant based in New York. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 2020 with a BA in Art History and Comparative Literature. She is the founder and director of Speciwomen, an independent arts non-profit dedicated to shifting representation in the arts by providing space, time, and resources to womxn artists. Through publications, exhibitions, loan initiatives, and artist projects, she fosters the development of impactful philanthropic action. Recently, she served as exhibition director for Miss.Tic: À la vie à l’amor, Art dans la ville, poétique de la révolte (1985–2022) at Palais des Papes. In collaboration with Dashwood Books, Cohen organized Justine Kurland: SCUMB Flowers and Pamela Sneed: Speaking Tongue in Fall 2024. Cohen has participated in public programming and conversations globally, including events at the Whitney Museum, Centre Georges Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo, and TEDx conferences. She is currently developing a boxset anthology of the artist archive This Long Century, slated for release in 2025 with Speciwomen.
AMANDINE NANA
Amandine Nana has been a curator at the French institution Palais de Tokyo since 2023. She is also an author, poet, and researcher. Trained as an art historian and urban planner, her expertise lies in African and diaspora studies, with a focus on narratives, marginalized audiences, archives, and collaborative and critical pedagogical practices in exhibition curation and beyond. Her hybrid curatorial practice operates at the crossroads of art, research, literature, publishing, education, and architecture, spanning Paris, Dakar, and New York. She has contributed to exhibitions and programs at various institutions, including the “Chimurenga Library” project at Centre Pompidou in 2021. A recipient of the Foundation Martine Aublet / Musée du Quai Branly research grant in 2021, she conducted research at the Musée Théodore Monod / IFAN in Dakar and co-founded the seminar “Perspectives Africana” at École normale supérieure Ulm in 2022. She is the founder of Transplantation, a socio-cultural non-profit organization and archive promoting Afrodiasporic and immigrant imaginaries as tools for social change in France. Alongside artist Monika E. Kazi, she received the Prix Dauphine for Contemporary Art in 2020 and the Chaumet Echo Culture Award in 2023.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HEARD?
THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNITY
THE INHERENT BARRIERS OF INSTITUTIONS
HOW TO MEASURE PROGRESS TOWARD GREATER REPRESENTATION
