Artnet News journalist Annie Armstrong recounts her emotional experience at Art Basel Miami Beach, where she desperately sought to see Julie Curtiss's painting "Mary With the Medela" (2024), a portrait of a woman using a breast pump. As a new mother balancing work and pumping, Armstrong felt a deep personal connection to the work but arrived at the White Cube booth moments after it had been sold and removed from view, leaving her in tears.
This article matters because it highlights the often invisible challenges faced by working mothers in the art world, particularly during high-pressure events like Miami Art Week. Armstrong's candid account of pumping in Ubers, hotel rooms, and fair bathrooms while covering the fair brings attention to the lack of infrastructure for nursing parents in the art industry, and the profound emotional resonance that art can have when it reflects underrepresented experiences like modern motherhood.