A letter from the founder

September 5, 2025

Dear Members, Supporters, Colleagues, and Friends,

For nearly eighteen years, and alongside a team of talented and impassioned female art professionals, I have steered POWarts through many challenges and newly envisioned evolutions. I can feel that time has passed, and also, it feels like yesterday that I drafted the mission and presented our intentions and values to a group of colleagues and friends who would become the inaugural Powarts Steering Committee. Following our launch event, where hundreds of professionals showed up to hear what we had to say, we were off and accomplished a ton!

In the last two decades, Powarts facilitated more than six hundred educational and/or networking programs, invited over fifteen hundred female guest speakers to showcase their expertise, undertook four industry-wide surveys, including the first ever industry-wide salary survey, and made accessible our industry's most coveted events through the distribution of VIP tickets to global art fairs.

And in addition to our member benefits, built into our mission - though oftentimes unspoken - was a deep striving to respond to current challenges facing our members. There was never a moment that we allowed ourselves to stay stagnant while the world around us changed and new realities and demands were placed on our members. Whether it was a market crisis, a global pandemic, national racial tensions, and the long overdue calls to action, the revocation of our healthcare access, or the shifts in government that have left many of us reeling from its wide-reaching effects - Powarts shifted and expanded the resources we offered and the manner that we offered them. Every time, we asked you what you needed, we listened intensely to your voices and we pivoted to meet your wishes. I hope that with every program and every pivot you felt seen, heard, and supported.

Today, I want to share with you another shift that we will be making, this one a response from inside the organization, specifically, me. As of September 15, 2025, Powarts will cease activity in its current form. (If you have joined after June 1, 2025, we are offering a full refund for any membership dues paid.) Simply put, it is time for me to move on to new projects and new beginnings.

It is not possible to capture in this one letter the depths of my gratitude for your support, your dedication, and your presence. I cherish this industry and your contribution. I am rooting for you, your joy, and prosperity, in the art world, and beyond.

Warmly and with gratitude,

Sara Cardona Kay