Currently on view at PHILLIPS New York is the exhibition NOMEN: American Women Artists from 1945 to Today, which was curated by Arnold Lehman, Phillips’ Senior Advisor and Director Emeritus of the Brooklyn Museum. It is part of Phillips X, the auction house’s private selling platform. The exhibition will include approximately seventy artists spanning the past seventy-five years, including Berenice Abbott, Diana Al-Hadid, Jennifer Bartlett, Lynda Benglis, Jenny Holzer, Agnes Martin, Elizabeth Murray, Louise Nevelson, Howardena Pindell, Susan Rothenberg, Betye Saar, Laurie Simmons, Kiki Smith, and Hannah Wilke. Paintings, photographs, and sculpture will offer an overview of the exceptional range and immense talent of these women artists from WWll to the moment the exhibition opens with one work completed specifically for the show. The exhibition runs from June 19 through August 3.

Arnold Lehman said, “NOMEN will aim to bring attention to the extraordinarily important role of female artists in the United States as America assumed the leadership of the art world. Pre-1945 most women artists in America struggled to assume their rightful place alongside their male counterparts. However, these determined women artists became increasingly central to the evolution and success of the American art community, as well as of the modern and contemporary art community worldwide.”

Miety Heiden, Phillips’ Head of Private Sales, said, “It is with great pleasure that Phillips X shines a light on the significant contributions these remarkable artists have made to the art historical canon. Their groundbreaking work has made a tremendous impact on the course of 20th century art and we are delighted that they are being rightly celebrated for their contributions in this amazingly insightful exhibition.”

The Guerrilla Girls’ 2012 headliner “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?” still stands as a relative test of female to male participation in museum permanent collections and temporary exhibitions and in the representation of women in most galleries nationwide. NOMEN aims to shift this paradigm, at least temporarily, by specifically excluding works of art by men.  NOMEN as the title states, is an attempt to look at recent art history - one of the most innovative periods in art in modern times – only through the exceptional works of art made by these outstanding women. Indeed, the increasingly significant participation of women artists from 1945 to now has spurred the very creativity, innovation, and embrace of difference that now defines American art.