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National Museum of Women in the Arts

Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection

A painting featuring colorful geometric forms. Bowling-pin shaped forms with blue, red, pink, and yellow patterns line the lower half of the composition. A large abstract yellow form and black-and-white chevron stripes fill the background.
Feb 27 to Jul 26, 2026

Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection illustrates women artists’ vital role in abstraction, showcasing work by some of the most important artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Drawn entirely from the contemporary art collection of Komal Shah and Gaurav Garg, the exhibition considers historical contributions, formal and material breakthroughs, and intergenerational relationships among women artists over the last eight decades.

Making Their Mark brings together more than 70 works made between 1946 and the present by approximately 50 artists. The exhibition illuminates the myriad ways that women explore, expand, and interrogate the boundaries of abstract art to foster vital discussions about representation, identity, and power. Sculptures, paintings, textiles, ceramics, prints, and mixed media works present a rich and interwoven picture of contemporary art history, highlighting the stories and voices of underrepresented artists.

Making Their Mark introduces viewers to well- and lesser-known artists who have made an impact on abstract art. Juxtaposing contemporary works with their pathbreaking historical antecedents, the exhibition emphasizes dialogues between artists who circumvent and break artistic conventions, embracing craft techniques and alternative materials. By bridging personal and political narratives as well as generational and geographic divides, Making Their Mark offers an intersectional approach to abstraction.

A painting featuring a map of the United States oriented vertically at a ninety-degree angle. The outlines of states appear in shades of brown, white, and red. The text “In the future we will all be mixed bloods” is printed in the center. Green, yellow, black, and white geometric patterns fill the background.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, In the Future Map, 2021; Mixed media on canvas, 72 x 47 3/4 in.; Shah Garg Collection; © Jaune Quick-to-See Smith; Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York; Photo by Ian Reeves

Exhibition Sponsors

Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection is curated by Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, New York.

Presentation of the exhibition at NMWA is made possible by the Sue J. Henry and Carter G. Phillips Exhibition Fund and the Shah Garg Foundation. Additional support is provided by Marcia Myers Carlucci, the Clara M. Lovett Emerging Artists Fund, San Francisco Advocacy for NMWA, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, and the Estate of Lisa Claudy Fleischman.