Jane L. Stern Gallery
This exhibition spans four centuries of work by extraordinary women who struggled against gender bias to take their places in history. For centuries, women were denied formal training and faced difficulty showing and selling their art. Their work was often dismissed as inferior and classified as “craft” rather than “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. Real progress came in the 1960s, when feminist and equal rights movements opened new paths for women to study, teach, and create art.
In the Medieval period, women worked as metalsmiths, glassblowers, masons, and painters, usually in a family business. Although women were allowed into artists’ guilds, they were prevented from moving up the ranks or attaining master status. Wealthy women of the aristocratic class spent their time embroidering and weaving, while monastic women toiled over manuscript illuminations. The Renaissance brought visibility to some women artists, typically the wives or children of artisans who were able to train in the family workshop; however, they were still restricted from studying anatomy from male nudes, excluding them from painting the human figure, which was the era’s highest art form.
By the eighteenth century, formal academies began replacing master workshops. Women gained limited access and were still barred from studying nude models. Despite this, many succeeded in still life, portraiture, and landscape genres. In fact, by the late eighteenth century, women were among the most sought after artists in Paris and regularly submitted to the Paris Salons, which were opened to women in 1791. The nineteenth century saw expanded access to training, with Impressionism elevating artists like Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot. By the century’s end, some cities allowed women to work from nude models.
World War I shifted women’s societal roles dramatically. With men at war, women entered the workforce and the political sphere. By the 1960s, feminism spurred new recognition of women artists. Many art schools opened their doors to female students for the first time. Women were free to work from nude models and to paint and sketch in public spaces. They also played key roles in the expansion of modernist sculpture and the tremendous growth of photography. During the Feminist Art Movement of the 1970s, women were at the forefront of experimentation with performance art, electronic and digital media, and conceptual art.
The works in this exhibit come from two collections. The thirty-seven pieces on loan from Reading Public Museum represent four centuries of works on paper, including etchings, engravings, lithographs, drawings, watercolors, woodblock prints, and photographs by some of the most canonical women artists. Forty pieces from Plains Art Museum’s collection are displayed alongside the loaned works. Their inclusion was spurred by a recent assessment of the museum’s collection, which revealed that only 10.5% of pieces are by women artists. Of the forty works chosen for this exhibition, twenty-one are by nationally acclaimed artists and nineteen by celebrated regional artists. Twenty of the forty objects have never been exhibited.
Students from Minnesota State University Moorhead’s Women and Art course, taught by Dr. Noni Brynjolson, contributed wall texts for select pieces. Though not comprehensive, these texts offer one of the only art historical overviews focused on women artists from this region.
Support for this exhibition is provided in part by Minnesota State Moorhead. Gallery admission is free every day of the week. Generous support provided by Art Bridges Foundation’s Access for All program; the North Dakota Council on the Arts, which receives funding from the state legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts; the Arts Partnership, with support from the Cities of Fargo, Moorhead and West Fargo; the McKnight Foundation; The FUNd at Plains Art Museum; Giving Hearts Day donors; Spring Gala sponsors; and hundreds of Plains Art Museum members like you.
top to bottom: Janet Elizabeth Turner (American, 1914 – 1988), Egg of the Flamingo, 1953, lithograph, Museum Purchase. Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania • Clara Skinner (American, 1902 – 1976), Theatre No. 1, c. 1933 – 1934, woodblock print, Permanent Loan, U.S. Government, W.P.A. Federal Art Project. Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania.
Exhibition Tour
Thursday, February 26, 6-6:45 PM, Free
Learn more about the powerful women artists who shaped their centuries of artmaking with this guided tour, covering artworks from the 17th to 21st centuries.