DMA Highlights Women Artists in New Exhibit
Have you ever wondered why there are not more women artists mentioned from the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries?
(Above: Images by Imani Lytle)
A new exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art explores the challenges and limitations experienced by female artists seeking professional careers before women were widely admitted into fine art academies.
Women Artists in Europe from the Monarchy to Modernism was curated by Nicole R. Myers, The Lillian and James H. Clark Curator of European Painting and Sculpture at the DMA.
While the exhibit is “small but mighty,” Myers said the timely topic gives the museum a platform to talk about struggles women artist faced – a story that is not well known.
During the times when the artists on display were alive, women were not only seen as inferior to men when it came to the ability to paint, but also that they were wired not to be able to possess the intellectual talent as a man.
Through paintings and works on paper by artists including Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Rosa Bonheur, and Käthe Kollwitz, the exhibition considers the various genres and media deemed appropriate for women, the prestigious familial or social connections that aided in career building, and the freedom offered by avant-garde movements that developed outside of official Academic systems, such as Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, and Futurism.
“The Triumph of Women Artists: A new exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art shows how they created masterpieces despite the obstacles placed in their path.” – Wall Street Journal
Women Artists in Europe from the Monarchy to Modernism was organized by the Dallas Museum of Art and is on view now through June 9. Admission is free.
