These presentiments trace back to Mitchell’s wealthy Chicago childhood. She was the second daughter of Marion Strobel, a poet whose promising career was stymied by her authoritarian and patriarchal husband, who expressed keen disappointment that Joan was not a son. Her resultant dis-ease continued into adulthood, leading her to live and work in Europe and, after 1959, to limit her extended forays back to New York and its misogynistic art world milieu. Her transatlantic artistic identity did turn fraught—for France, Mitchell wryly explained, her art was too American (i.e., violent) and, for Americans, too French, her paintings downgraded as decorative.

Mitchell’s fierce sensuality and predilection for risk became subsumed into passionate compositions beginning in Paris, followed by the exquisitely poetic, oversized canvases she produced after moving into a more peaceful life in Normandy. In Vétheuil, Monet, Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Matisse seemed like “colleagues” to her, and Mitchell developed a deeply considered visual dialogue with their unmistakably French approaches to space and color.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts is fortunate to own two exemplary oil paintings—Sale Neige (1980) and Orange (1981)—demonstrating a transition toward the renewal of Mitchell’s later work. Sale Neige, whose title seems to—but doesn’t really—refer to dirty snow, exemplifies the strikingly atmospheric landscape-based abstractions, evocative of nature’s ever-changing temperaments, that Mitchell developed by the eighties. In the prominent upper area of this edge-to-edge, hardly “dirty” composition, downward strokes of white, tinted with pinks, lavenders, and lighter blue, partially reveal a scaffolding of black lying underneath. Below, more thickly applied, colorfully accentuated horizontal and vertical scrawls are punctuated by gravitational drips, suggesting a receding natural topography through complementary touches of lilac, cobalt blue, and dazzling yellow.

In conceptualizing Sale Neige, Mitchell recalled the silent and colorless winters of her Lake Michigan childhood: the white is “in me,” she always maintained. Orange exemplifies the artist in a different frame of mind. Painting with a bolder brush, here her manipulation of vigorous strokes into a grid-like over-covering replaces, more brashly, land and sky references traditional in landscape painting. “People always look for the horizon. I want to hold a surface in space,” Mitchell explained of her nature-based abstractions. This superimposition appears heavier, denser, and more textured at the top, a reverse compositional ploy Mitchell developed to represent emotional intensity in a structural way. Pentimenti below in glowing pastel hues, especially the pale greens and lavender of her Vétheuil garden, subtly hint at deeper space.

White pigment patches scattered throughout Orange interject air, acting as rest stops for the viewer’s eye. These sections serve to modify the overwhelming edge-to-edge markings in dissonant orange, a hue that Mitchell used frequently, its emotive permanence in her consciousness traceable back to childhood. The artist—the centenary of whose birth is being celebrated in 2025—insisted, “I paint from remembered landscapes that I carry with me and remembered feelings of them which of course become trans-formed.” Further differentiating herself from the New York School, she chose to modify improvisation with clarity. “I want to know what my brush is doing,” she said. Her work also served a deeper purpose: “Painting” she confirmed, “is what allows me to survive.”

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1. Arreau, Hautes-Pyrénées (1949)

Every time I look at this colorful painting by Loïs Mailou Jones (1905–1998), I find myself smiling while focusing on a different part of the beautiful French landscape. As an African American artist, Mailou Jones felt at home in France, specifically Paris, where she was treated with respect and her art was appreciated.

2. Figure (Merryn) (1962)

Merryn, located in Cornwall, England, is a place that Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) called home. I appreciate that this alabaster sculpture recalls the rolling landscape of this area, and I can envision a human form frolicking through the countryside. Hepworth, who wanted to be a sculptor from the time she was a young child, used direct carving to create this sinuous work.

3. Iris, Tulips, Jonquils, and Crocuses (1969)

Alma Woodsey Thomas (1891–1978) is one of my favorite artists. Her home was located on 15th street here in Washington, D.C. When I look at this painting, I see the flowers almost dancing and blowing in the wind. I imagine that Thomas gazed out her window and into her garden for inspiration. 

4. Plaid Houses (Maquettes) (2005–11)

The word “plaid” in this work’s title is a reference to the 15th century Scottish Gaelic word for blanket (plaide). Laure Tixier (b. 1972) uses felt and other natural materials to highlight ideas of habitat, architecture, and city planning. Her maquettes depict homes from around the world, and they bring back my childhood memories of little miniature houses positioned under our Christmas tree.

5. Untitled (Fort) (2006)

When you were a child, did you ever create a home of your own by building a blanket fort? In this photograph by Angela Strassheim (b. 1969), the bright purples and pinks that surround this blanket fort provide a contrast to the girl’s facial expression. By meticulously staging this photograph, Strassheim invites the viewer to decipher what is happening in this picture.

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A book like this is a huge undertaking! Briefly tell us about the process from conception to publication.

Yes—we started the planning stages years ago, and this project kept us very busy during the building’s renovation. With colleagues including curators, educators, and members of NMWA’s shop, development, and leadership teams, I discussed goals for the project. We wanted to bring in more voices: artists, outside curators and writers, and others who would help us illuminate the works in our collection. We also wanted to feature many of the great works of art that NMWA has acquired since we last created a collection highlights catalogue twenty years ago.

We reached out to many wonderful partners who agreed to contribute essays. We then worked with a great team at Hirmer Publishers on the design and production of the book. We’re very proud of it.

Can you describe how the catalogue is organized and its features?

It has a thematic organization that shares certain goals of the thematic organization of our galleries. NMWA’s curators have presented our collection galleries thematically since 2017, with the aim of breaking down exclusionary categories like nationality and time period, instead emphasizing commonalities among women and nonbinary artists across chronology and medium. This leads to a lively presentation that enables visitors to make new discoveries.

We created thematic chapters for the book that would have a similar effect: “Face to Face” and “Body Language” focus on artists’ interpretations of portraiture and the human figure, for example, while others, such as “Handle with Care” on artists’ books and multiples, feature mediums that the museum holds in depth.

In addition, a graphic element called “See more” appears throughout the book, encouraging readers to flip through and make extra connections. It’s a way for readers to “choose your own adventure” and perhaps see a new way of linking one artwork or essay to another.    

From the book’s many essayists and artist contributors (nearly fifty!), what was the most surprising information that you learned?

I felt lucky and grateful to work with the artists who wrote statements on their work: for example, Alison Saar’s text illuminated the rich references—from Greek mythology to Josephine Baker—behind her sculpture Scorch Song (2022), and Joana Vasconcelos wrote a powerful statement about her feminism and her art.

Many artists and essayists told stories of their longtime connections with NMWA, including Fanny Sanín, who wrote about the first time the museum exhibited her abstract painting and the way she developed her signature style; Bridget R. Cooks, who wrote about discovering the art of Alma Woodsey Thomas during a NMWA internship early in her career as an art historian; and the Guerrilla Girls, who wrote about why they included a reference to NMWA in one of their iconic posters.

There are so many more I could mention—some essays were surprising, many were heartfelt, and overall, they reminded me of NMWA’s amazing and generous community.

What didn’t make it into the book—be it an artwork, text, or something else entirely—that you wish we could have included? Why?

This is hard to answer, and I’m biased! If we had an extra 100 pages, I certainly have ideas about what we could have included, but I’m so pleased with the book as it is. 

What five women artists—living or dead, in our collection or not—would you love to interview for the next great NMWA publication?

If the dead could speak, I’d invite Elizabeth Catlett, Joan Mitchell, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Alma Woodsey Thomas, and Remedios Varo to discuss their work.

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Fresh Themes

Throughout the third-floor collection galleries, nine thematic categories disrupt conventional ideas about women and nonbinary artists’ approaches. Several themes—such as the large-scale sculptures in “Heavyweight” and the creative applications of textile techniques in “Fiber Optics”—highlight artists who upend gendered expectations of those mediums. Others aim to show the work in NMWA’s collection in a new light: “Elemental,” for example, highlights the work of modern and contemporary artists who view earth, water, fire, and air as creative tools and forces of life, purification, and destruction. For the first time, two themes, “Seeing Red” and “No Shrinking Violet,” gather works that share common hues, pointing to the varied emotion and symbolism that artists can express through color.

Seeing Red

Red, more than other hues, commands attention. Although specific responses to it reflect personal experiences and cultural influences, red consistently provokes emotional extremes and antithetical associations. Shades of crimson, cherry, ruby, and rose, among others, can seduce or warn, allude to ardent love or impassioned anger, and signify both danger and good fortune. It evokes our life’s blood as well as fire, a source of vital warmth and light but also fearsome energy. Artists throughout the centuries have wielded the color red in its many variations for formal, realistic, and symbolic purposes.

Featured works employ red to illuminate artists’ emotional responses and elicit ours. In her sculpture Scorch Song (2022), Alison Saar (b. 1956) presents a carved wood female figure, warrior-like in a skirt of cast-iron skillets and brandishing another as weapon. The sculpture’s red hue, alluding to the Yoruba deity of thunder and lightning, heightens her ferocity.

The color serves symbolic purposes, yet also formal ones, as it organizes a composition or creates visual rhythm. In her abstract painting Orion (1973), Alma Woodsey Thomas (1891–1978) used varied shades of crimson and scarlet to express the power required for a rocket to leave the planet’s atmosphere. Inspired by the Apollo space missions in the 1960s, her mosaic-like brushwork suggests flickering starlight, while the red palette signifies the heat and energy required to break Earth’s gravity.

Evoking its long association with love, luck, and life, artists also employ red in works of celebration. Niki de Saint Phalle (1930–2002) communicates a joyful vision of womanhood in Pregnant Nana (1995). Boldly colored patterns adorn the voluptuous breasts, buttocks, and stomach of this “everywoman” who recalls fertility goddess effigies from ancient civilizations. The figure’s monumental scale underscores women’s empowerment, while her animated pose and expressive gesture exude pleasure and playfulness.

Get Red-y for Our Reopening

NMWA reopens on October 21. Plan your visit and experience the remixed galleries—in all their glorious hues—in person.

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Can you describe the major treatments you carried out for each painting?

Oakes’s painting had previously been lined onto a secondary canvas, which it was separating from. That separation was creating big lumps on this tiny little painting. I don’t usually take linings apart, but in this case, it was war­ranted because there wasn’t any other way to fix the problem. I used a large tacking iron to gently warm the bulged area, then I left it to cool under weights. This completely resolved the deformations.

I also don’t commonly take off varnishes, but this one had begun to crosslink with the painting’s surface. It almost looked like a layer of plastic. In another twenty or thirty years you might not be able to get it off. For the re-varnish, I used B-72. It has been age-tested in a lab and is very stable. It gave the painting an evenly saturated surface without being too glossy or heavy in appearance.

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The Hunter painting came to me because it couldn’t be framed properly—the canvas had been stretched so tight that the top and bottom were bowed inward. The biggest challenge was trying to get that canvas to be on a stretcher with ninety-degree corners. I had to stretch it twice, actually. I used a warm tacking iron to try and reduce the hard creases of the original foldover edge. While this sig­nificantly softened the creases, they still are slightly visible at the edges. I’d love to see this painting when it’s framed.

What could you glean about each artist’s technique?

The Oakes painting is just beautiful. Technically, it’s very good. There wasn’t really any evidence, that I could see, of under layers or how she may have laid out the scene. It has a very polished look. There’s also so much texture in it. In the foliage, the foreground, in the rocks and trees. But the sky and water are so nice and smooth. That’s part of what makes the painting so aesthetically beautiful, on such a small scale. I really loved it.

Hunter’s technique on her painting is rock solid. I was initially concerned I would run into trouble as I tried to re-create the edges—that the paint might crack, especially because the trees and grass of her scene are very close to the edge. I had to center it as best as possible and lose as little of the image as possible. But I really didn’t have any trouble. From a conservation perspective, I was very pleased with that.

Were there any surprises in your work?

Once I got the lining off of the Oakes painting, I discovered a stamp on the back of the original canvas. It reads, “From / M.J. Whipple’s / Artists Supply Store / 35 Cornhill / Boston.” From this, we can guess that she went to the store in Boston, selected this pre-primed canvas in the size she wanted, and went home—or on location—to paint that beautiful scene. I’d love to know how she did her painting. From memory? In the setting itself?

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New acquisitions from the museum’s fiscal year ending in June 2022 stretch from the 17th century to the present. They include paintings by Louise Abbéma and Sylvia Sleigh; sculptures by Magdalena Abakanowicz and Shinique Smith; prints by Leonor Fini, Jiha Moon, and May Stevens; and photographs by Nan Goldin, Sally Mann, and Ana Mendieta. These additions—and other selections highlighted here—are inspiring NMWA’s curatorial team as we plan to share the collection afresh in fall 2023.

Alison Saar (b. 1956)

Through her sculptures, drawings, and prints, Alison Saar explores the subjects of racism, sexism, ageism, and the specific challenges of being biracial in America. Touching on many personal, artistic, and cultural references, Saar’s work reflects the plurality of her own experiences. In many of her works, Saar invokes the kitchen as a powerful realm, where a woman—in her roles as mother, caretaker, provider, and priestess—cooks, conjures, concocts, captivates, and commands. In Scorch Song (2022), a female figure stands upright, carved from wood and girded with a skirt of cast iron skillets like armor. She holds another pan as if a weapon.

This fierce figure not only nourishes her loved ones, but also protects and defends them. While NMWA holds an impressive collection of the artist’s prints, Scorch Song is notably the first sculpture by Saar to enter the collection.

Louise Moillon (1610–1696)

Born and raised in Paris, Louise Moillon lived in the neighborhood of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, an area of the city that was an enclave of Protestant refugees from the southern Netherlands. Among these expatriates were artists who brought a tradition of tabletop still-life painting. Moillon, also a Protestant, was a leading member of this group, and with them developed her sober and dignified style featuring arrangements of fruit and flowers. Moillon’s Still Life with Basket of Plums, Peaches, Cherries and Redcurrants, Together with Fraise-de-Bois in a Porcelain Bowl, Figs, and Mulberries on a Wooden Ledge (ca. 1630) is the third work by the artist to enter the collection. The other two were also gifts from the Holladay collection.

Sonya Clark (b. 1967)

Textile and social practice artist Sonya Clark is renowned for her mixed-media works that address race and visibility, explore Blackness, and redress history. While Clark often applies fiber art techniques to materials such as human hair, thread, and other textiles, her beaded works, too, convey her interest in familial and ancestral bonds. In Esther Mahlangu’s Touch (2015), she depicts celebrated South African Ndebele artist Esther Mahlangu painting a mural for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, in Richmond. This work was included in NMWA’s 2020 exhibition Sonya Clark: Tatter, Bristle, and Mend. It has an additional connection to the museum’s history, as Mahlangu created a mural on NMWA’s exterior in 1994. While the collection includes several sculptural and photographic works by Clark, this is the first beaded piece by the artist to be accessioned.

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Personal Favorites 

French art of the 18th and 19th centuries was a particular favorite of Wilhelmina Cole Holladay’s, so it is no surprise that this gift includes four paintings, all portraits, from this period, including two works by Adèle Romany (1769–1846). In Portrait of an Artist, Traditionally Identified as Mademoiselle Halbou (ca. 1795), Romany depicts a fashionably dressed woman standing at a table on which she rests a large folio with sheets of paper protruding from the edges. Visible on one is a human figure, while another is a crumpled sheet of music, indicating that the sitter is practiced in both the visual and musical arts.

Among the many works from the early twentieth century is a painting by Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907). Modersohn-Becker was an Expressionist, a movement concerned with communicating emotion through art, and she is known for her stark images of individuals, such as Head of an Old Peasant (ca. 1903), as well as her female nudes. She captured her sitters in thick, impasto paint in a subdued and earthy palette. Tragically, Modersohn-Becker’s life was cut short at the age of thirty-two; she died, most likely from a blood clot, shortly after giving birth to her first child. 

Among the latest-dated works in the Holladays’ gift are two sculptures, one by Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012) and another by Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930–2017). NMWA has multiple vibrant print works by Catlett, but Stepping Out (2000) is the first sculpture by the artist in the collection. Made of bronze, Catlett’s female figure confidently strides forward, wearing a dress and high-heeled shoes. Abakanowicz’s sculpture Kayser Infant II (2001) is part of a series of faces on poles she created from the 1980s through the early 2000s, which evoke archaeological artifacts or death masks. This work joins Abakanowicz’s fiber sculpture 4 Seated Figures (2002), already in the collection. 

Other highlights include works by Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010), Sonia Delaunay (1885–1979), Claude Raguet Hirst (1855–1942), and Jane Peterson (1876–1965). While this is not a complete list of the works in this extraordinary gift, it represents the Holladays’ broad collecting practices.

Giving Thanks 

We look forward to sharing many of these new additions to the collection upon our reopening. This autumn marks the centenary of the birth of Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, who devoted the later decades of her life to NMWA. Thanks to the Holladays’ foresight and generosity, the world not only has a museum dedicated to showcasing art by women, but a collection that encompasses a large swath of women’s achievements of the past 500 years.

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Museum of Art (BMA) and National Gallery of Art. Here, we spotlight selected works—ranging from the creations of early women silversmiths to an Impressionist painting—on loan to the BMA.

A Quick Tour of NMWA at the BMA

The NMWA collection works on view at the BMA span the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries and are placed throughout the museum galleries. In the BMA’s European galleries, the earliest work on loan is a floral still-life painting by Clara Peeters (ca. 1587–after 1636), dated to about 1610. Peeters, a Flemish artist working in Antwerp during the first quarter of the seventeenth century, was one of the earliest artists to focus specifically on still-life painting. Her era was marked by rising demand for small-scale paintings to decorate private homes as well as a growing interest in the scientific investigation of the natural world. These factors led Peeters and other artists to create highly detailed and naturalistic paintings of flowers. 

Also on view in the European galleries are two pieces from NMWA’s historic silver collection: a 1706 Queen Anne tankard by Alice Sheene (active 1700–15) and a George III child’s rattle (1808) attributed to Mary Ann Croswell (active ca. 1805–30). Sheene is one of the earliest London silversmiths whose work survives; tankards like hers were often given to new brides and mothers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Croswell registered her silversmith mark in London about a century after Sheene. Like her predecessor, Croswell was also a widow at the time of registration, as this was the only status under which women were able to register their own marks.

On the opposite side of the BMA’s Antioch Court from the European Galleries are the Modern Art galleries. In these galleries, The Cage (1885), by Berthe Morisot (1841–1895), hangs next to a painting by her friend and fellow Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The Cage exemplifies the spirit of Impressionism with its quick, unblended brushstrokes and areas of exposed canvas that reject any pretense of illusionism.  

Art in Residence

Although our doors are temporarily closed, through loans to both the Baltimore Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art, NMWA is able to introduce a wider audience to the work of women artists from across centuries. For a full list of NMWA works on loan during the museum’s renovation—by Rosa Bonheur, Louise Moillon, and many others—check our Collection on the Move page. 

A warm thanks to both of these museums for sharing in our mission and graciously hosting art from our collection.

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Just a mile away from their home at NMWA, 11 collection works are on display on the walls of the National Gallery. This collaboration enables the art in both collections to be understood and experienced in a fresh context.

Modern Visions

In addition to our old mistresses, the National Gallery is also hosting select NMWA works by artists from the 20th century to the present. Harry Cooper, senior curator and head of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Gallery, says, “These generous loans have allowed us to supplement our East Building permanent collection galleries with…an iconic self-portrait by Frida Kahlo, a minimalist relief by Eva Hesse, and a sensitive figure painting by Amy Sherald. [These works fill] specific gaps in our collection while allowing us to better represent the key contributions of women to the history of modern and contemporary art.”

Kahlo’s Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky (1937) shows the artist framed between drawn curtains as if presenting herself to her intended viewer—the Russian exiled revolutionary, with whom she had a brief affair. Adorned in flowers, jewelry, and traditional attire, Kahlo (1907–1954) imbues her image with elegance and self-assurance. The painting not only makes references to Kahlo’s cultural heritage through her preference for Tehuana dresses, but also demonstrates her Marxist political inclinations via her association with Trotsky.

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Known for her pioneering sculptural work in fiberglass, latex, and plastics, Hesse (1936–1970) explored the ways in which simple materials could suggest a wide range of experiences and states of mind. She often employed grids in her work, as seen in Study for Sculpture (1967), in which tightly knotted cords dangle in nine-by-nine rows and columns from a Masonite surface. The industrial, artificial qualities of metal and varnish contrast with the organic, corporeal feel of pliant materials that protrude and hang limply into sexually ambiguous forms, expressing balance and unity through opposites.

The use of gray for Amy Sherald, as with Hesse, plays a critical role in her art. While Hesse explored geometric forms and the effects of light, Sherald (b. 1973) uses mono-chromatic elements to deconstruct social codes about race. They Call Me Redbone, but I’d Rather Be Strawberry Shortcake (2009) depicts a young girl in the artist’s signature grayscale. The artist’s works are often grounded in self-reflective perspectives, as she herself experienced being labeled the term “redbone,” slang for a biracial or light-skinned person of African descent. Through the absence of skin tones associated with Black identity, she challenges common perceptions of racial markers, instead choosing to represent Blackness through her own unique lens. The figure of the young girl in the lemon yellow dress almost appears to float in space against the bright pink background, seemingly unconfined by societal and cultural borders.

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Just a mile away from their home at NMWA, 11 collection works are on display on the walls of the National Gallery. This collaboration enables the art in both collections to be understood and experienced in a fresh context.

Historical Heroines

NMWA’s historical art has always elucidated the integral roles that women have played in the creative movements of their times. Now, several works from the museum’s collection—encompassing figural, religious, and still-life scenes from 16th- and 17th-century Flemish and Dutch art through 19th-century American paintings—are exhibited in the National Gallery’s West Building, interspersed with their works from those eras.

Pendant portraits of Samuel and Susan Avery by Sarah Miriam Peale (1800–1885) are displayed alongside paintings by the artist’s relatives Rembrandt Peale, Charles Willson Peale, and James Peale. Regarded as the first professional woman painter in the U.S., Peale was a highly successful society portraitist in her lifetime. Nancy Anderson, head of the Department of American and British Paintings at the National Gallery, says, “Because the museum’s collection does not yet include paintings by Sarah Peale, we are especially pleased to be able to show paintings by another member of the remarkable Peale family.” The Avery portraits were likely painted on the occasion of the couple’s wedding—they sit in formal poses, richly attired to showcase their wealth and status. Luxury commodities like her tortoise-shell comb, gold jewelry, vermillion-red cashmere shawl, and even the stylish furniture on which they sit attest to their desire to display their cosmopolitan tastes.

Likewise, wealthy and elite Philadelphians sought out powerful portraits by Cecilia Beaux (1855–1942), as did acquaintances and relatives. Ethel Page (Mrs. James Large) (1884) is a wholly arresting portrait of the sitter, who was the artist’s friend and a descendant of Roger Williams, founder and governor of Rhode Island. At the National Gallery, NMWA’s canvas is seen opposite Beaux’s later painting Sita and Sarita (ca. 1921). While Ethel Page is presented in an enigmatic, dark composition, her face the only illuminated part of the painting, Sita and Sarita depicts the artist’s cousin dressed in a white gown with an inquisitive black cat on her shoulder. Together, the two paintings illustrate Beaux’s skillful impressionistic handling of black and white tonalities and her use of dramatic light and shadow.

Contextualizing NMWA’s works alongside the National Gallery’s expansive collections not only offers insight into the stylistic breadth of these women artists, but also shows them in relation to their male contemporaries. Describing the installation, Anderson notes, “Although the room is devoted to images of women, most of the paintings on view are by men. Thus we are especially pleased to add works addressing the same themes by equally accomplished women.”

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