Beyond the Artist: Women as Consumers, Collectors, and Connoisseurs

Even the most committed curators struggle to achieve gender balance in their galleries: works by women artists — especially from the Early Modern era — remain rare and are increasingly expensive. Still, focusing exclusively on artists leaves many stories untold. Drawing on years of research from The Female Impact project, Judith Noorman explores how women in the seventeenth-century Netherlands shaped the art world as consumers, collectors, and connoisseurs. These women were not exceptions, but active and powerful participants in the creation of cultural value. Using examples from her collaborations with the Museum of Fine Arts (MSK), National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), the Mauritshuis, Museum Prinsenhof Delft, Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar, the Rijksmuseum, and the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Boston, Judith shows how museums can meaningfully diversify narratives – each one short and accessible yet paradigm-shifting — by illuminating the full spectrum of women’s participation in the art world.

Judith Noorman

University of Amsterdam
Judith Noorman is Associate Professor of Early Modern Art History at the University of Amsterdam and Principal Investigator of The Female Impact, a Dutch Research Council (NWO)–funded project (2021–2026) on women’s roles in the seventeenth-century art market. Her research examines how women shaped art production, collecting, and consumption in the Dutch Republic. She is the co–author of publications including Het unieke memorieboek (2022), Art, Honour and Success (2020), Gouden Vrouwen (2020), and Rembrandt’s Naked Truth (2016). She is currently completing a book on women as art buyers and connoisseurs in the seventeenth century.