National Museum of Women in the Arts

The National Museum of Women in the Arts is another in the series of museums established primarily due to a collector donating his or her large collection. This museum is unusual in that its founders are still alive, still collecting, and still donating. The idea for this collection and museum is relatively recent--the founders began collecting in the 1960s.

The museum covers art by women from the sixteenth century to modern day. There are fewer pieces from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries than later ones, a testament to the limited opportunities of women. Indeed, many rooms have wall labels explaining the difficulties of being a female artist in the time of the work shown in the room. Some items' labels elaborate on how particular women overcame these difficulties. For what it's worth, an example of a difficulty only overcome in the twentieth century: artists traditionally learn to paint figures realistically by studying nudes. For women this was not considered an option.

The museum is pretty much exclusively Western art (i.e., art from women in American and Europe). I'm not sure if it's due to the preferences/knowledge of the original founder/collectors or if it's an implicit statement about the art opportunities available to women in the rest of the world.

It's small; I explored it in under an hour.

I took pictures in the museum.

Many months later I returned for its new special exhibits. It took about an hour to see them--about half the museum's space is allocated to special exhibits. (There were none when I visited during the winter; that space was simply closed off.)

I saw the large special exhibit, Royalists to Romantics, of French women artists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It had rooms of paintings of family scenes and of still life (both socially acceptable subjects for women painters) as well as of portraits (slightly less acceptable) and of historical scenes (mostly unacceptable). The historical paintings were lavish color paintings in the Troubadour style. Many paintings in this exhibit were displayed at the time of their painting in French salons.

As in the permanent collection, many plaques explained women's difficulty in advancing as artists because, for one, they were ineligible for most contests and fellowships.

There was also a special exhibit of unusually designed or illustrated books, including pop-ups and books that unfold to be meters long. Some didn't look like books at all except that somewhere in the piece of art is paper with words or drawings.

A tiny special exhibit showed objects by women silversmiths, mostly items one sees on dinner tables.

The special exhibit of letters by Diego Rivera's wife, Frida Kahlo (also an independent painter) to and from her mother, tell the story of a woman making a life in a land far from home.

Another special exhibit had art by the nun Mary Corita. She made graphic art in a similar pop-art style as Andy Warhol using stencils and silkscreening techniques.