Tech-executive-turned-collector Komal Shah didn’t always consider herself an activist. But through the foundation Making Their Mark—which she founded in 2014 with her husband, Gaurav Garg, as the Shah Garg Foundation and renamed in 2025—she has become one of the top philanthropic advocates for female artists.
Yesterday, the foundation—which works to advance the representation of female artists in public collections, education, and historical narratives—unveiled its newest program, an initiative to incorporate the works of women art that history has looked over into New York public school curriculum. Together in Teaching gave 12 teachers unrestricted access to Shah and Garg’s estimable personal collection of art; from there, they crafted a curriculum that situates female artists alongside their male contemporaries. Making Their Mark plans to expand the program nationally next year.
The program was unveiled at a symposium at the New Museum, attended by artists and cultural leaders including artist Suzanne Jackson; Joy Pace, director of visual arts at New York Public Schools; art historian Lauren O’Neill-Butler; Massimiliano Gioni, artistic director of the New Museum; and Paul Thompson, executive director of the Arts Office at New York Public Schools. More than 100 New York public school educators also attended to learn about the classroom material from the teachers who created it.
Although Shah’s interest in collecting only started about a decade ago, her extensive cache traveled to museums across the country for her 2023 “Making Their Mark” exhibition. Since then, Making Their Mark has evolved from a show into a seismic endowment for female artists and historians, with a 2023 book (Making Their Mark: Art by Women in the Shah Garg Collection), a national forum in Washington, DC, this past March, and now, the Together in Teaching initiative.
Part of the inspiration for the foundation came from an interaction Shah had with a school-aged boy who was baffled upon seeing the expansive history of the female artists in the collection. “We cannot change the future of art history without changing how we teach it,” Shah said. “We want children to grow up knowing that women have always been innovators, pioneers, and leaders in art.”
The curriculum draws from artists in the collection, such as abstract painters Amy Sillman and Joan Mitchell, artists Simone Leigh and Sarah Sze, sculptor and writer Barbara Chase-Riboud, and more. For Shah, Garg, and the leaders of New York Public Schools, the initiative is not only a correction of the male-dominated canon in art history but also a way for young women to believe that they, too, can become artists worthy of recognition.
“Every student deserves to see themselves represented at the highest levels of their field,” said Thompson, the head of arts for New York Public Schools. “Making Their Mark celebrates the vision, innovation, and influence of women shaping the contemporary art world, while inspiring all students to imagine their own possibilities and see themselves as future contributors to the arts.”
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