Museum report·Vienna
41,000 works, under 3.5%: Albertina confronts 250 years of women artists left out of the record
The Albertina in Vienna opens Her Story on 30 October 2026, the first exhibition devoted to the women artists in its own collection: 250 works across five centuries, set against research showing only about 41,000 of its more than 1.2 million objects are by women.
Vienna's Albertina opens Her Story on 30 October 2026, the first exhibition devoted entirely to the women artists represented in its own collection. The show brings together 250 works spanning five centuries, from 16th-century engravers to contemporary artists, and uses them to ask a question that reaches well beyond the museum's walls: why have women artists remained so poorly represented in historical collections?
The numbers behind the exhibition are stark. Research at the museum has so far identified around 41,000 works by women among more than 1.2 million objects, under 3.5 per cent of the holdings, and more than 1,400 women artists by name. The figures are provisional, since many historical prints are not yet fully catalogued, but they make visible both the achievements on display and the gaps in the record. Around 60 per cent of the women identified were born in the 20th century, about 25 per cent in the 19th, and roughly 15 per cent between the 16th and 18th centuries.
Instead of a chronological hang, the exhibition is arranged in ten chapters that examine the social conditions shaping women's artistic work, with titles including Visible, Dilettantish?!, Enterprising, Academic, Committed, Scientific, Self-Directed, Displaced, Recognised? and Feminist. The earliest documented women in the collection were born in the 16th century, among them engravers, etchers, publishers and painters such as Sofonisba Anguissola. Later sections move through Maria Sibylla Merian, Rosalba Carriera, Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun and Angelika Kauffmann to Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Kathe Kollwitz, Sonia Delaunay, Maria Lassnig and VALIE EXPORT.
One telling example is Vigee Le Brun, celebrated across Europe in her lifetime yet represented here by three works on paper rather than her famous oil portraits, a consequence of the Albertina's historic focus on drawing and printmaking. She lived in Vienna from 1792 to 1795 after fleeing the French Revolution. The museum, founded in 1776, says it has made a more deliberate effort in recent decades to acquire work by women, with 2025 and 2026 purchases including pieces by Jenny Saville, Leiko Ikemura and Rosa Barba. Her Story runs until 14 February 2027.
