Making Space: Women Artists in Postwar Abstraction at MoMA

This collection is so vast, international and sensational, I find it hard to believe that women were pushed to the back during post WWII through the mid 1960's.  The exhibition contains so many prominent & established female artists from an expansive international group it makes it circumspect to consider that these women were subjugated to male artists of the same period.  It's understandable that Lee Krasner & Elaine de Kooning were overshadowed by their husbands, Jackson Pollack & Willem de Kooning but the works by these two formidable & acclaimed artists seen in this exhibit &  them to be on par with the top echelon of postwar abstraction artists.  There are forceful works by Brazilian artist Lygia Pape whose has her own retrospective currently at the MET Breuer.  Women from varying countries represented are:  Elsa Gramcko (Venezuela),  Eva Hesse of (Germany) Louise Bougeois (b France), Etel Adnan (Lebanon), Maria Freir (Uraguay), Bridget Riley (Britain), Hedda Sterne (Romania) and Yayoi Kusama (Japan).  Plenty of American artists were represented:  Helen Frankenthaler, Alma Thomas, Lynda Benglis, Joan Mitchell and Alice Neel to name but a few.  An abundance of art forms are represented: paintings, sculptures, photography, prints, etc.  The majority of these works & artists will be familiar.  I particularily liked the works by Adnan, Thomas, Pape and Benglis.  I don't like to think women were 2nd class citizens in the art world.  In retrospect, this may be valid but I'd like to think moving forward the artists work speaks for the work itself, not for gender, race or nationality for that matter.  The exhibit of Postwar Abstraction is only by women artists.  The term "only" is limiting and this extraordinary exhibit should co-exist with male artists of the same epoch.