National Association of Women Artists: The 135th Anniversary

Cecilia Beaux, Isabel Bishop, Dorothy Dehner, Doris Lee, Louise Nevelson, Ida O’Keeffe, Agnes Pelton, Jane Peterson, Bessie Potter Vonnoh, Anna Walinska, Harriet Whitney Frishmuth

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 Bessie Potter Vonnoh, Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, Jane Peterson, Ida O’Keeffe, Isabel Bishop, Doris Lee, Dorothy Dehner, Louise Nevelson, Agnes Pelton, Anna Walinska, and Cecilia Beaux in its ranks, all of whom are represented in the exhibition.

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.