This article is part of our latest Museums special section, which focuses on the intersection of art and politics.

What if the art world could create a kind of popular awakening?

It is a question Apsara DiQuinzio, a curator at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, asked herself not long after the Women’s March of 2017.

That grass-roots protest helped inspire the Feminist Art Coalition, a nationwide collaboration of museums and arts organizations large and small — 90 institutions and counting — that are planning exhibitions and programming around the theme of feminism and aimed toward this fall.