What do the worlds of motorsports and fine art have in common? According to entrepreneur Zoë Barry, art advisor Spring McManus and racecar driver Aurora Straus—the founders of a new initiative aimed at elevating women in these traditionally male-dominated fields—the answer is actually quite a lot. Their Driven Artist Racing Team (DART Car) initiative was born out of a shared frustration with the persistent lack of equality in their respective industries. “Unfortunately, only about 3 percent of venture capital dollars go to women every year,” Barry, CEO of digital health company ZappRx and fintech startup Zingeroo, told Observer. “If you think about the billions of dollars that are deployed in capital, they primarily go to male founders. That was always a very disappointing experience I had as a female founder.”
Berry’s interest in motorsports led to a chance meeting with Straus, a Cold Spring, New York native who first got behind the wheel of a sports car at 13 and, by 19, had become the only professional teenage female racer in North America. In the near decade since, she’s collected numerous accolades—including, in 2022, becoming the first woman to win the prototype series Radical Cup. Straus’s achievements got Barry thinking about the statistics of women in predominantly male industries other than her own. “I did some research and discovered that when Aurora started, 0.5 percent of all licensed motorsports drivers were women. Today, it’s about 4 percent.”
It’s a number, Barry points out, that comes up consistently across fields, including art. As a member of Faena Rose, a private members club for arts and culture in Miami, she frequently attends art auctions, which show a similar level of gender disparity. “I realized that only 4 percent of female artists are represented at auction every year. I looked at that and thought, women are taking the same risk that men are, whether in motorsports or art. They have real talent and are still underrepresented.”
An idea began to take shape in Barry’s mind—one that would empower women in motorsports and fine art—and she brought in Straus and McManus (a fellow Faena Rose member) to help develop an initiative aimed at advancing women in both fields. Together, they devised a plan to raise investor dollars and commission work from top female artists, which would then be displayed on race cars driven by an all-woman racing team. DART Car launched at Classic Car Club Manhattan with the unveiling of the first car, a McLaren Artura GT4 designed by Mickalene Thomas.
McManus, who has placed Thomas’ work in a number of clients’ collections over the years, immediately thought of the artist to kick off the commissioning program. “She was the first person that kind of came to mind for this project,” McManus said. The collaboration was a natural fit for Thomas, too. “I’m honored to have been invited to be one of the inaugural artists in this innovative collaboration,” she told Observer. “Spring and I have a long-standing connection in the art world, having worked together on various exhibitions over the years. Her ongoing support of my work has been invaluable.”
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But Thomas’ involvement with DART Car runs deeper than her shared history with McManus. Best known for her large-scale acrylic paintings of Black women that reclaim space in art history, the artist has long used her work to deconstruct conventional definitions of beauty, race and gender—and her creations for DART Car are no exception. Drawing from her abstract series, Tête de Femme/Untitled, Thomas employs bold geometric shapes and patterns, using collage techniques to craft dynamic, abstracted female faces. The designs, which feature on the exterior wrap of the car as well as the racer’s driving suits and hand-painted helmets, reflect the fearless spirit of the racers.
DART Car plans to sell the original artwork and put the proceeds back into the fund in the hopes that they can continue to commission a new art car every year. While this affords greater visibility to both the artists and drivers, it also ensures that all the women involved achieve appropriate financial gain. For Straus, a former brand ambassador for BMW, setting up a structure that would allow such gain was imperative. “We care very deeply that we create the same exact compensation framework that ‘the boys’ club’ have had for generations now,” she explains. “One of the things that I love about this program is that we’re finding opportunities across both industries to challenge the system and create a ‘girls’ club.’”
McManus also hopes the initiative will inspire more women to get involved in the process of collecting, as well as help her to place more art made by women in existing collections. “The majority of the collectors that I work with are men; the majority of the artists that they’re interested in are men. I think this will have a tremendous impact on that and allow more women to get excited about collecting and more people excited to elevate women artists within their collections, too.”
The Mickalene Thomas-designed car will have its official racing launch at California’s Sonoma Raceway later this month at the season opener event for SRO America, one of the two major professional racing series in North America. (From there, the DART Car team will head to Dubai and Abu Dhabi for the 24H Series Middle East Trophy.) In advance of the event, DART Car asked for racing number 44, which according to Barry, has a special significance. “We requested 44 to represent the 4 percent of women artists represented at auction and the 4 percent of women in motorsports,” she says. “Hopefully, by next year, that number will change.”
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