It’s 2023 – and women are still being told to cut their art down to size

From paintings stuck in cellars for centuries to acclaimed sculptures pointlessly destroyed, the art of women has been crowded out of galleries and public spaces. It's time we stopped putting up with it

Last week I was speaking with an artist - highly regarded and in her 60s - when she began telling me about a recent incident with a male curator. She had been helping him install a show at a major institution when he realised the measurements for a large work of hers were off - he'd failed to double check the dimensions of the gallery. As a result, he asked if she could chop off a section of her large-scale artwork so it could fit. Understandably outraged, she declined, and the work didn't end up in the show. But she also wondered whether the curator would have asked the same of a male artist - to butcher his own work to make it accommodate the space?

Women accommodate to a fault. But why have we been made to feel like this: guilty if we take up space; unpleasant if everything we do is not done with grace; demanding if we ask for what we want? It's shocking to think that in 2023, the questioning of women's authority - and the disbelief in what we are capable of - is still rife.