Welcome to Clara:
Database of Women Artists®. Clara®
is a unique interactive database containing authoritative
information on 18,000 women visual artists of all time
periods and nationalities. The information in Clara®
is drawn from the materials in NMWA’s extensive
Archives
on Women Artists.
Both Clara® and the Archives on Women
Artists are works in progress. We are continually adding
records for new artists and updating information on
existing artists. Please keep in mind that the content
in the database is entered manually by project staff.
Thank you for your patience while we continue to update
and enhance this resource.
Search the database by
specifying artists’ countries, work types,
artistic roles, dates, and exhibitions, as well
as names and keywords.
Clara® Updates!
NMWA's Library and Research Center (LRC) was the recipient
of a second grant from the Institute of Museum and Library
Services (IMLS). With this new IMLS Museum for America
Grant which supports lifelong learning, the LRC
plans to make Clara® the hub for further
development of Web-based educational outreach. For the
next two years, NMWA staff and consultants will build
on the accomplishments of the last three years by creating
Clara Interactive, an educational module using
new technologies to engage 4th-12th grade students,
and their teachers and families in the study and understanding
of the lives and works of women artists. The plan also
includes the enhancement of 300 additional artists'
records through the digitization of primary source materials
culled from the LRC's Archives on Women Artists
and the Special Collections.
As the Clara® project team focuses on
the development of this new phase, we will not be able
to process unsolicited requests for inclusion in
Clara® or the Archives on Women Artists
for the time being. If you have questions or want more
information please call 202.266.2831 or email clara@nmwa.org.
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Sofonisba Anguissola, Self-Portrait, 1554. Oil on panel. 6 ¾ x 4 ¾ inches (17 x 12 cm). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria www.khm.at
Although women were excluded from the study of human anatomy, which informed the work of many of Italy’s greatest Renaissance artists, Sofonisba Anguissola (ca. 1532 - 1625) was widely admired in her time as a marvel of artistic innovation. Not only did she develop genre painting and intimate portraiture to a high art fully one hundred years before they became fashionable, but she is credited with inspiring an entire generation of Bolognese women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to pursue successful careers in the arts.
For information on other Renaissance women in the arts, see:
