A version of this article originally appeared in The Back Room, our lively recap funneling only the week’s must-know art industry intel into a nimble read you’ll actually enjoy. Artnet News Pro members get exclusive access—subscribe now to receive the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.
Here is some alarming news: Nearly half of Gen Z and millennial women are considering leaving the arts in the next five years.
Here is a fact that makes that even more alarming: Nearly 80 percent of workers in the arts are women.
This potential mid-career talent drain is my main takeaway in Hardwiring Change: Buying Back Time, the second annual report from Artnet, produced in partnership with the Association of Women in the Arts (AWITA).
Last year, the inaugural survey found that women were scarce in leadership positions. This year, I drilled down on why, and the answers were clear: inadequate pay, opaque advancement criteria, and administrative overload.
On Monday, we launched the report at Deutsche Bank’s London headquarters with a crowd of 200. I discussed the report’s findings with five leaders in the arts, all at different stages in their careers. Here’s what they had to say.
Margaret Carrigan, left, moderates Artnet and AWITA’s second “Hardwiring Change” panel at Deutsche Bank London on Monday, June 8, 2026. Photo: Olivia Estebanez.
Women Are Bearing the Brunt of Making Change
Around 76 percent of women aged 35–54 reported facing structural barriers linked to gender, race, or class. These structural issues are widely recognized today, but too often those most affected by them are also tasked with fomenting change. Black women and Asian women reported that race was an even bigger barrier than gender.
Ese Jade Onojeuro, the curator of this year’s British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, said that that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives are crucial. Still, since art institutions have historically been white spaces, “when you bring somebody of color into that, the burden of change really falls on them.” As budgets shrink, DEI often becomes deprioritized, she added.
Touria El Glaoui, the founder of the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, said that having an equity strategy is very important. “It’s the retention that is important, and the retention comes from pay, from progression, evolution in a job.”
Workers Are Burning Out Because of Admin Overload
Nearly half (48 percent) of full-time workers reported spending at least half of their working time on admin tasks. Women are increasingly turning to A.I. tools to fight overload and reclaim time. Nearly two-thirds of respondents to the Hardwiring Change survey reported using A.I. tools in their daily work. Yet a growing amount of research suggests A.I. puts more women’s jobs at risk, leaving individuals in a precarious position with no formal guardrails from their institutions.
Courtesy of AWITA.
“I feel like I now have to step up and juggle even more because I can use Claude to help me do certain tasks,” said Alexandra Steinacker Clark, a podcaster and author of the recently published book Working In Art: How to Build a Career in the Art World. “I think that it can most definitely serve workers if the expectations from employers or from organizations and institutions don’t rise exponentially with it.”
Admin “seems to disproportionately fall on women,” Elaine Bledell, CEO of Southbank Centre, said. “It should be falling equally on all employees.” Her institution—the largest art center in Europe—has adopted a formal A.I. policy, she said, while sounding a note of caution: “The history of technology has never been that it’s given us more leisure time and freed us up.”
Representation at the Top Matters
As I mentioned earlier, roughly 50 percent of women aged 35–44 are considering leaving the arts—the highest rate among any age group. That is especially worrying because that cohort is on the verge of moving into leadership roles. In order to make real change, women have to be visible at the top.
“Representation is incredibly important,” Bledell said, noting that she is the first female chief executive of Southbank Centre in its 75-year history. “Probably not coincidentally, I was appointed by a female chair. You need to see women doing these roles in order to attract women.”
“Our biggest, most-visited, most-government-funded organizations are still dominated by white men,” said Rosanna Cundall, a partner at Saxton Bampfylde, one of the U.K.’s leading executive search firms. Across the 15 national museums in the U.K., there are only four female chairs and five female leaders, and within both groups, all but one are white.
Getting women to board-level positions is critical, she argued. “We see women wanting to apply for trustee roles, but less likely to go for those chair seats. That to me is profoundly depressing. We need to see women and people of color in those top roles, not just represented on boards.”
Attendees at Artnet and AWITA’s second “Hardwiring Change” panel at Deutsche Bank London on Monday, June 8, 2026. Photo: Olivia Estebanez.
The Bottom Line
El Glaoui said that none of the stats in the Hardwiring Change report surprised her. “We all kind of know it,” she said. Agreed. Putting numbers to the problems helps quantify them. But then we have to act.
That action cannot come from women alone. The people with the most power to drive structural change—the white men who still dominate the boardrooms of the biggest cultural institutions—were not in the room on Monday.
The stakes could not be higher. Gen Z and millennial women represent the sector’s digital fluency, its cultural relevance, and its connection to new audiences, especially since women now control around a third of global wealth and buy more art than men. Lose them, and you lose institutional knowledge, creative energy, and the very people expected to lead the field through its most uncertain period yet.
Diversity and equity initiatives tend to attract the already converted. Until the people who hold institutional power start showing up to these conversations—and taking the report back to the C-suite—the burden of change will continue to fall on exactly the people who are struggling to carry it.
P.S.: Drop me an email if you’d like to watch a video recording of the panel in full: [email protected]
