The history of art has rarely lacked women, but it has often lacked their authorship. For generations, women were central to the visual language of culture while remaining peripheral to its creative power. Today, museums across Europe are reexamining that imbalance, not through tokenism, but through serious, curatorial focus.
The following exhibitions, spanning centuries, media, and ideologies, share something deeper than gender. They spotlight artists who used their work to observe, confront, and reimagine the world around them. Some challenged artistic norms from within. Others quietly built their practice in spaces where recognition was never promised.
Whether your travel is already set or you’re seeking something worth the journey, these exhibitions are worth making time for.
Female Artists at Work (16th–19th Centuries) - October 25th 2024 to May 4th 2025
Palazzo Braschi
Long before the art world acknowledged women as professionals, they were producing works of extraordinary technical and emotional depth. This exhibition offers a focused and historical look at female artists working between the 16th and 19th centuries; women whose names rarely made it into textbooks, but whose work reshaped the cultural codes of their time.
Suzanne Valadon - January 15th 2025 to May 26th 2025
Centre Pompidou
Valadon’s story is one of creative reclamation. First known as a model for Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec, she went on to become a painter whose work resisted idealisation. Her portraits brought a different kind of female subjectivity to the canvas. This exhibition gives her the space and recognition that her male contemporaries often received by default.
Radical! Women Artists and Modernism, 1910–1950 - June 18th 2025 to October 12th 2025
Belvedere Museum
Modernism is often discussed as a movement of male genius. This exhibition corrects the lens. Featuring artists who helped define the era’s seismic shifts in form and ideology, it reframes the avant-garde as a shared project. The result is both rigorous and restorative.
Marisa Merz: The Sky Is a Great Space - January 31st 2025 to June 25th 2025
Kunstmuseum Bern
Marisa Merz remains the only woman associated with Italy’s Arte Povera movement. But her work never relied on that distinction. Known for her poetic minimalism and materially modest installations, Merz’s art is deeply personal and deliberately open-ended.
