Jane L. Stern Gallery
This exhibition represents four centuries of art created by remarkable women who struggled against gender bias to take their places in history. Until the twentieth century, women were frequently denied formal training and often had difficulty showing and selling their work. Artwork created by women was automatically deemed inferior, and stereotypes traditionally associated women with crafts, such as textiles or decorative arts, rather than what was deemed to be “fine art.” Even women who possessed undeniable talents were said to have overcome the limitations of their gender in order to succeed in a man’s field. It was not until the equal rights and feminist movements of the 1960s that women were finally free to study, teach, and explore art throughout the United States and Europe.
This fascinating exhibition examines works on paper—etchings, engravings, lithographs, drawings, watercolors, woodblock prints, and photographs—by some of the most important women artists of the last four centuries with a selection of 37 examples from the permanent collection of the Reading Public Museum. The show chronicles the emergence of women as professionals in the field of art and records the extraordinary creative contributions made over the centuries.
Historical works by (or after) Elisabetta Sirani (Italian, 1638-1665) and Marie-Louise-Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun (French, 1755-1842), outstanding nineteenth-century works by Rosa Bonheur (French, 1822-1899), Anna Lea Merritt (American, 1844-1930), and Eliza Greatorex (American, 1819-1897), and examples by icons of twentieth century art like Sonia Delaunay (French, 1885-1979), Käthe Kollwitz (German, 1867-1945), Louise Nevelson (1899-1988), and Françoise Gilot (French, b. 1921), are featured in the exhibition. Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) era works by Clara Skinner (American, 1902-1976), Peggy Bacon (American, 1895-1987), and Isabel Bishop (American, 1902 – 1988) capture contemporary life on the streets of New York, theaters, and rural America. Works by more contemporary artists such as Lee Bontecou (American, b. 1931), Elizabeth Osborne (American, b. 1936), Ida Applebroog (American, b. 1929), and Lorna Simpson (b. 1960), among others, explore meaningful trends in the current world of art. The entire exhibition is on loan from the permanent collection of the Reading Public Museum in Reading, Pennsylvania, who organized the exhibition.
