NEW YORK (January 4, 2024) – After jointly presenting a show of 1913 Armory Show exhibition artists this past fall, Lincoln Glenn and Graham Shay 1857 return this spring to recognize the contributions of some of the thousands of women artists who were members of NAWA. Founded in 1889, the organization is the oldest women artists' collective in the United States and has provided a community for professional women artists, promoting the work of its members through annual exhibitions, traveling shows, awards, and educational and outreach programs. Throughout its illustrious history, NAWA’s membership has included the likes of Mary Cassatt, Bessie Potter Vonnoh, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Blanche Lazzell, Isabel Bishop, Doris Lee, Dorothy Dehner, Louise Nevelson, and Faith Ringgold in its ranks.
Just as Virginia Woolf believed that women authors needed a modest wage and a room of their own to write fiction, women artists have searched for a place to exhibit their work and a group of their peers to provide artistic and intellectual support. The National Association of Women Artists (NAWA) (and originally called the Woman's Art Club of New York) was founded by five women who felt isolated from a community of their peers and from the opportunity to exhibit their art. They provided women with an alternative to the male-dominated National Academy of Design and Society of American Artists in New York, which continued to bar women from participating in many life drawing and anatomy classes, from gaining governing positions, and from exhibiting their art at annual exhibitions.
Art historian Wanda Corn's comments about the necessity for the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington seem apropos of NAWA: “Until such time as female culture is fully integrated into our museums and cultural institutions, women's exhibition halls still have a job to do. When other institutions do so little, women's buildings foster respect for women's work – and in the process, give women back their past.”
Examples by Jane Peterson, Agnes Pelton, Anna Walinska, Alice Schille, Absentia St. Leger Eberle, Bessie Potter Vonnoh, Gertrude Fiske, Dorothy Dehner, Blanche Lazzell, Doris Lee, Isabel Bishop, Mary Elizabeth Price, Anna Richards Brewster, and Kyra Markham, amongst others will be on display for visitors. The exhibition will run from March 28th through May 31th (overlapping with The American Art Fair and American Art Conference) and the space will be open to visitors from 10am-6pm on Mondays-Fridays. A complimentary exhibition catalogue accompanies the exhibition at 17 East 67th Street; it features an essay originally written by Donna Gustafson for the initial presentation of the NAWA Collection at Rutgers at the university’s Zimmerli Art Museum, and was edited for length by Jeffrey Wechsler. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, March 28th from 5-8pm. To illustrate the continued activity of NAWA into the present day, our show is held in conjunction with Hollis Taggart gallery, which will present a selection of work by fourteen current members of NAWA, along with works by several Honorary Vice Presidents of NAWA. An opening reception will be held at Hollis Taggart, 521 West 26 Street, on Thursday, March 21st, from 6-8pm.
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