The Woman Question 1550–2025 / The City of Women

Two concurrent exhibitions, The Woman Question 1550–2025 and The City of Women, will launch MSN Warsaw’s second year of operations in its new building. Nearly 200 women artists from around the world, from Artemisia Gentileschi and Angelika Kauffmann, through Tamara Łempicka, Frida Kahlo and Eva Hesse, to Marlene Dumas, Tracey Emin, Leonor Antunes, Yoko Ono and Tala Madani. Five centuries of art by women, a display of their commitment and the force of feminist initiatives—The Woman Question and The City of Women offer a fresh retelling of art history, leading to a revision of the so-called canon and undermining the accepted view that before the 20th century women artists were rare exceptions.

The Woman Question was prepared by the curator and art historian Alison M. Gingeras, who is familiar to MSN Warsaw audiences from the hugely successful show The Dark Arts: Aleksandra Waliszewska and Symbolism which she co-curated. The other exhibition opening at the same time, The City of Women, comprises four separate parts assembled by another group of curators and researchers. Gutsy: On Feminist Infrastructures is curated by Julia Bryan-Wilson, Other Tomorrows by Michalina Sablik and Vera Zalutskaya, Her Heart by Karolina Gembara, and We Were There: International Women’s Year 1975 by Wiktoria Szczupacka.

The Woman Question and The City of Women carry forward a new feminist narrative previously explored at MSN Warsaw in such exhibitions as The Dark Arts: Aleksandra Waliszewska and Symbolism; A Tiger Came into the Garden: Art of Maria Prymachenko; Paint, Also Known as Blood: Women, Affect, and Desire in Contemporary Painting; and Who Will Write the History of Tears: Artists on Women’s Rights. Both of these new exhibitions are also the result of the museum’s international collaborations. Audiences will view works never before shown in Poland, borrowed from numerous global institutions, including the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Accademia San Luca in Rome, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar, the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo, Kröller Müller Museum in Otterlo, and the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau in Munich among others.

The Woman Question 1550–2025, or nearly five centuries of art by women
The Woman Question doesn’t just confront the myth of women’s artistic absence, but first and foremost testifies to women’s enduring and dynamic presence as artists. Alongside the presentation of women’s varied artistic output, the aim of the exhibition is to showcase the power inherent in the new approach to art history, which demands justice, giving voice to the voiceless and visibility to the invisible. It will show that although they were often undervalued and had to work against various social obstacles, women, as well as trans and non-binary people, tirelessly pursued their creative mission, using artistic means to proclaim their presence and their unique life experiences. The show will include contemporary works as well as paintings by women artists of the Renaissance, the Baroque, and the 19th century. To make the continuity of women’s authorship legible over such a long span of art history, the exhibition primarily focuses on figurative painting and sculpture.

The open-endedness of the “question” of the exhibition’s title reflects how the very category “woman” has itself emerged as a question to be explored by a range of artists—in particular those who identify as trans-women, trans-men, gender non-conforming or as non-binary. By adopting an all-inclusive definition of womanhood, this exhibition hopes to prolong the legacy of this early feminist querelle into our present day.

This striking group of nearly 200 works offers a centuries-long visual history of women’s empowerment.

“The exhibition borrows this phrase to frame nearly five hundred years of cultural production by women artists,” explains curator Alison M. Gingeras. “The Woman Question brings together works by almost 150 women artists, divided into eight thematic chapters. From allegorical depictions of female strength and artistic representations of motherhood, to the themes of educational access, war, mysticism, and self-representation, the exhibition shows that women have consistently asserted their roles as creators, critics and visionaries. What do we know of women’s agency in times of war, and how does the role of women in society change at moments of great historical importance? The Woman Question highlights the vital, continual dialogue between gender, power, and artistic agency.”

As art historian Mary Garrard has written, “Feminism existed before we knew what to call it.” This exhibition curated by Alison Gingeras makes that lineage clearly visible.

The City of Women—a mosaic of the approaches, aesthetics, traditions and strength of feminist art
Alongside the monumental exhibition prepared by Alison Gingeras, in The City of Women visitors to MSN Warsaw will also witness four independent projects supplementing the historical overview of The Woman Question with contemporary artistic and activist commentaries.

Four exhibitions in The City of Women

Other Tomorrows
Curators: Michalina Sablik and Vera Zalutskaya
This show explores concepts of identity and community in an age of political and ecological crises, and growing social polarization. When existing ways of thinking and methods of action cease to work, there is a need to transcend entrenched divisions and search for new languages to talk about the world which take into account the diversity of life forms, corporeality and relationships. The exhibition presents the work of seven international artists who draw on myths, local legends, and personal experiences to create narratives in which fiction, fantasy and technology become tools of emancipation. It is a proposal for feminist, decolonial and queer thinking, in which imagination becomes a political practice and a space of freedom.

Gutsy: On Feminist Infrastructures
Curator: Julia Bryan-Wilson
Works by twelve artists boldly explore the connections between body, gender and infrastructure. The adjective in the title refers to a brave person acting on “gut feelings,” instinctively, from deep within the body. The artists take up the hidden systems maintaining life, such as the circulation of water, air, and energy. Their installations and sculptures from fabric, concrete or plaster reveal fragility, resistance and interdependence. The artists, including Leonor Antunes, Maria Bartuszová, Mona Hatoum, Eva Hesse, Jumana Manna, Alina Szapocznikow and Johanna Unzueta, wrestle with experiences of exile, violence and loss. They foreground the imperfect and often inadequate arrangements—physical and social—as well as the hidden networks sustaining them. Their works combine organic and synthetic materials, juxtaposing the corporeal with the industrial.

Her Heart
Curator: Karolina Gembara
This section is devoted to reproductive rights. It combines visual works (photographs and films) that address the experience of abortion, in clinics or at home, and the social perception of abortion. Works by such artists as Carmen Winant and Franzis Kubisch are presented in the gallery space. In the museum’s reading room there are films, a graphic novel, archival documents from protests, and placards with slogans from the Czarny Protest in 2020. The invited artists share an intimate perspective, revealing the private histories of themselves and their protagonists.

We Were There: International Women’s Year 1975
Curator: Wiktoria Szczupacka
This section examines the history of feminist art in Poland and socialist feminism as an alternative to Western feminist movements. It focuses on international cooperation among women within state organizations, and shows how their activities impacted art and the fight for women’s rights. Archival documents related to the celebrations of the International Women’s Year 1975 are juxtaposed with works by avant-garde women artists—texts, artworks and other materials evoking and commenting on those events. 

The Woman Question 1550–2025 and The City of Women are opening at a time when women’s rights in Poland is once again taking a back seat, and years of mobilization and activism are not yielding the desired social progress. If the fundamental aim of feminist art is equity, then feminist art practices might strengthen and inspire our political imaginations and can help contribute to collective action and social change.