A New AI Tool Wants to Fix the Gender Imbalance of Gallery Rosters

A new AI tool is aimed at revealing the gender imbalance in gallery rosters. Hall W Rockefeller, who designed the program, is using it advance the mission of her art organization, Less Than Half, which aims to raise the profile of women artists.

The AI tool analyzes a gallery’s artist roster to determine the percentage of male, female, and non-binary artists represented. Though the tool is not perfect, it purports to be capable of identifying artists who identify as non-binary, as well as decipher the genders breakdown of art collectives and duos. Any institution that appears to meet the diversity benchmark can display a “Less Than Half Approved” digital sticker on its website.

“I want people to notice the very apparent discrepancies and inequalities between men and women artists and the systematic ways in which women artists are kept from succeeding,” Rockefeller told Ocula. In addition to buying art made by women, “we want to support the people who are supporting women artists,” Rockefeller said. “That means supporting galleries who make a distinct point of representing women artists, supporting the development of their work, careers, and building legacies.”

Rockefeller has drawn on her family legacy, as well as her own art expertise as a writer and collector, to mobilize collectors, institutions, and the market using informed and more intentional purchasing power.

Art Basel and UBS’s 2025 Global Survey of Collecting found that high-net-worth women are more likely to collect women artists, with an average of nine percent more women artists in their collections. In 2024, they also spent 46 percent more than their male counterparts on art and antiques.

“This is a consumer that is more likely to buy, and more likely to take risks,” Rockefeller argued. “Especially for the middle market, the female collector is the figure that could really be the lifeline for a lot of these struggling mid-tier galleries we’re hearing so much about.”

Additionally, the UBS and Art Basel’s 2026 Art Market Report found that the gender gap widened at galleries with a turnover above $10 million, which is worth considering as trillions of dollars are expected to change hands in the coming decades.

“A lot of that wealth is going to women: to widows, to daughters,” Rockefeller added. “There’s a generation that is about to really come into their own, whether it’s inheriting money, or women are succeeding professionally as well, so I think there is a real opportunity for the big, blue-chip, international mega galleries to start courting that woman and taking her seriously.”