For decades, arts activists have advocated for parity in whose work is shown across demographics, yet what has gained less attention is how those exhibitions have been documented and published. This study takes on the issue by investigating a dataset of exhibitions and the reviews and catalogs about them from 2016 to 2017 to determine proportionality of coverage. Findings vary in which demographics are more frequently covered by media, but overall there was less written about artists of color, particularly women of color. This is notable when considered in light of traditional sources on which art libraries depend. This article is an expansion of a paper presented at the 52nd annual ARLIS/NA conference held in Pittsburgh, PA, in April 2024 as part of the session “Collecting for the Future: Strategies for Inclusive Collection Development and Representation.”
Emilee Mathews (2025) studied this question.