Imagine waltzing into your beloved sanctuary on a friday evening after a long work week to let your mind wander for a while as you approach the elevator and try to decide which exhibition you want to see first. The elevator is full and you try not to make eye contact because it’s awkward, duh, so you keep your head down as you hear various languages spoken around you by tourists who all came to MOMA from all over the world to admire its artistic repositories. Upon realizing how crammed the museum is going to be, you think to yourself, “Yeahhh, maybe I should not have chosen a Friday evening.”

As a writer and artist, museums were the first place I resorted to whenever I need inspiration for my own work. Over the years, MOMA became one of my favorte places whenever I needed to distract myself. Even though MOMA is a place that offers a wide variety of art—anything from sculpture to oil paintings—there might be a need for a conversation on diversity there.

I was able to obtain data from MOMA’s official website to find out how the museum supports two types of diversity: genders and nationalities. According to the data, most of the art pieces that have found their home at MOMA at various times, originate from the U.S and Europe. The chart lists those top 10 countries.

It seems that nationalities and ethnic identites are not the only factors that affect MOMA. There are also gender disparities when it comes to the lack of representation of female as well as non-binary and gender non-conforming artists.

Let's look at trends as see how gender representation has changed since 1940.

From the 70s to the 90s there is an increase in female representation at MOMA which is likely due to the rise of feminism at that time. However, since the 20s there has been a decline. When it comes to non-binary and gender non-conforming folks, there has been a historic underrepresentation in their works. However, the lack of presence of those identities might also be due to the fact that having those identities has sometimes been unreported.

Ana Juarez, a museum studies student at Indiana University, thinks that in this day and age museums should be trying harder to encourage diversity in artistic spaces.

“Museums as an important venue of art can be political in that they can push certain kinds of agenda, and i think the gender disparity as well as disparity when it comes to the origins of artists can play a critical role when it comes to identity politics,” Juarez said.

She also thinks that places such as MOMA can be agents of positive societal change.

“I mean, as a person of color with latino and indigenous roots, I’d like to see art that is representative of my community, and I think every community has the right to that,” Juarez said.

In addition, she thinks that the representation of people with different gender and ethnic identities should not be about tokenizing them, but rather it should be based off the genuine motivation for artistic spaces to move toward positive change.

“It’s very easy for, you know, workplaces and really any space to be like ‘well, let’s throw in this thing made by so and so and hope that someone will give us a thumbs up for being diverse.’ I think that’s very disingenous and representation should not take that form at all. It should be coming from a genuine desire to make spaces a better place through representation.