Both Bennett and Schmidt have stated that among their primary goals in starting the collection was to address what they viewed as systemic discrimination against women artists by ‘big art’ and to promote figurative realism, a genre they believe has fallen out of favor because of the bias of curators and museum directors in favor of abstraction and avant-garde art.
As stated by Bennett, “[the collection] is a place that shows what is possible for contemporary figurative realists and provides an example of what women painters are capable of.
Eventually, we would hope that both communities, figurative realists and women painters get a boost from what we are doing.”[10] Shortly after beginning their collecting activities, Bennett and Schmidt, who are married,[11] decided to add work by historic women painters to those of the contemporary artists already in the collection.
The Bennett Collection includes several historic works including pieces by Mary Cassatt, Artemisia Gentileschi,[12] Elaine de Kooning, Sarah Miriam Peale, Agnes Martin, and Suzanne Valadon.
Among the living artists represented in the collection are major works by Julie Bell, Margaret Bowland, Andrea Kowch, Alyssa Monks, Zoey Frank, Xenia Hausner, SuSu, Katie O’Hagan, Harmonia Rosales, and Kathrin Longhurst,[13] among numerous others.