Centre Pompidou curator Nathalie Ernoult, one of the organizers of elles@centrepompidou, talks frankly about the conceptualization, organization, and reception of this landmark exhibition.

Female artists are still largely underrepresented in the collections of major museums (less than 20 percent in the Centre Pompidou -- Musée National d’Art Moderne collections, for example).

The 2009-10 contemporary collections exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, elles@centrepompidou, was entirely dedicated to the work of female artists, presenting more than 130 works of art made by female practitioners from 1907-2007.

For the organizers, the show was neither a feminist art exhibition nor a claim for the existence of female-made art, but aimed rather to account for the multiplicity of their artistic approaches.

For the museum, the exhibition was also an opportunity to complement its collection with new acquisitions and to introduce new artists to the public.