A Century of Art by American Women
As the country celebrates the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States, the Museum has re-installed our permanent collection galleries in 2020 with a special exhibition highlighting images of women from American and European artists from the 3rd through 21st centuries and work by American female artists dating from the 1920s through the present.
This section of the gallery features artists working in the late 19th century and first decades of the 20th century and includes prints by Bertha Jaques, Blanche Dillaye, Frances Gearhart, and photographs by Jane Reece. The exhibition includes signature work by American masters Georgia O’Keeffe and Louise Nevelson from early in their careers. The Museum’s nationally recognized still life collection is represented with works by accomplished 20th century painters Janet Fish, Janet Monafo, Carol Mothner and Myra Schuetter.
For 60 years, the Evansville Museum has added to its permanent collection by purchasing works of art from our annual regional competition entitled the “Mid-States.” The blind jurying process has resulted in a significantly higher percentage of paintings, prints, drawings, sculpture, textiles, ceramics, wood and metal work by women in our permanent collection than the national average of art by women in most museums. The pieces selected for this installation give an overview of the many outstanding female artists from Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and Ohio represented in the collection.
It is a joy to celebrate this abundance of talent during a monumental anniversary year.
Mary McNamee Bower
The John Streetman Executive Director
Women Depicted through Art
This installation of paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture of the female form provides visual examples of how the depictions of womanhood have evolved from the early Christian period to modernity.
To illustrate how wonderfully versatile and unique our permanent collection is, artists such as Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano Bronzino, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, James Yoko, and George Deem are featured in this exhibition. Works exhibited here were given by donors from across the United States who believed in our museum, including Cornelius Ruxton and Audrey Love, who served on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Chester Tripp Jr. and Mary H. Webster, benefactors of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Dayton Art Institute respectively. Generous Evansville collectors, including William A. Gumberts, Elizabeth Zutt, Arlene and Sol Bronstein, and Martha and Merritt deJong also were instrumental in the formation of the Museum’s expansive art collection.
Beginning in this gallery and continuing in the paneled Gothic Room, works of art depict women of various ages and ethnicities shown in various scenes and stages of life. Imagery related to motherhood, royal and religious portraiture, psychological studies of women, and the celebration of the female form are included.
We hope this portion of the Crescent Gallery re-installation will off the viewer an opportunity to reflect on a wide variety of visual examples of the evolving role of femininity.
Tory Schendel Cox
The Virginia G. Schroeder Curator of Art
