The exhibition will offer a rare opportunity for U.S. audiences to see Carr’s sweeping, spirit-infused landscapes, O’Keeffe’s varied exploration of the natural world, and Kahlo’s self-portraits and lesser-known works. The 62 works on view will draw parallels in the art, careers, and national identities of these three artists, who were only peripherally aware of each other’s work. The exhibition establishes three key connections among the artists — nature, culture, and the public self — with works by each artist appearing in each group.

All three artists saw life linked together in a continuum, and they often envisioned nature as female. In O’Keeffe’s sensuous red hills and Carr’s painting of totemic female forest spirits, that identification is highly visible. For Kahlo, intimacy with the natural world was often expressed through the inclusion of animal and plant forms in her self-portraits and still-life subjects.

The artists took an active interest in indigenous people, their nature-based spirituality, and the interplay of colonialism. They explored the use of design elements, the healing power of religion, and cultures as keys to a primordial spirit of place. And they struggled to find authenticity in their lives, to overcome illness and to achieve personal wholeness. Their complex efforts to define themselves through their art led to work that — either overtly or in hidden ways — functions as self-portraits.

Emily Carr (Canadian, 1871-1945) is one of the most celebrated figures in Canadian culture, a position due equally to her outstanding modernist landscape paintings and to her writings. Carr, orphaned in her mid-teens, attended the California School of Design and taught art to children before pursuing further art training in Britain and France. In 1899, she began travelling into frontier areas of her home province of British Columbia to develop a visual record of Northwest Coast Indian villages and totem poles. Smitten with the freedom and beauty of the landscape, she forged a style that would forever define the wilderness and native people of British Columbia in the Canadian consciousness.

Georgia O’Keeffe (American, 1887-1986) is not only America’s most popular woman artist, she is also probably the best-known American modernist of the first decades of the 20^th century. She studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and in New York at the Art Students League and the Columbia University Teachers College. Her work was championed and exhibited by photographer Alfred Stieglitz; they married in 1924. O’Keeffe spent more and more time away from New York, and eventually moved to New Mexico, where she spent much of the rest of her life. Throughout her career, O’Keeffe’s work varied between representation and abstraction, both inspired by nature.

Frida Kahlo (Mexican, 1907-1954) began to paint during her extended convalescence following a serious injury in a streetcar accident. Her paintings, mostly self-portraits, landscapes, and still lifes, fuse an astounding variety of visual forms with her own brand of symbolism. Her stormy and passionate relationship with muralist husband Diego Rivera, as well as her pain and suffering, provided the subject matter of most of her work. As communists and supporters of the Mexican Revolution, she and Rivera rejected European influences and looked instead to Mexico’s rich cultural heritage for artistic inspiration.

Places of Their Own: Emily Carr, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Frida Kahlo is organized and circulated by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Toronto, Ontario. Exhibition curator is Dr. Sharyn Udall of Santa Fe, New Mexico. A companion book by Udall is for sale in the museum shop for $45.00 hardback and $29.95 softcover. Following NMWA, the exhibition will travel to the Vancouver Art Gallery from June 15 to September 15, 2002.

According to Udall, "In the end, these artists’ legacies reside in their eloquent, unceasing explorations of how place, nationality, myth, nature, and gender intertwine in their art. The images we hold in our mind of Canada, the United States, and Mexico have been shaped in no small part by the places imagined and reinvented by Emily Carr, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Frida Kahlo. Their own awareness of north-south connections invites us to think about the possibility of a hemispheric axis, linking regions together in a new understanding of history, politics, and representation."

Tickets for the exhibition are $8 for adults, $6 for students and seniors (age 60 and above), and free for NMWA members and youth 18 and under. Free Community Days are the first Sunday and Wednesday of each month.

Presentation of Places of Their Own: Emily Carr, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Frida Kahlo at the National Museum of Women in the Arts is generously sponsored, in part, by Philip Morris Companies Inc.

"We are honored to partner with the National Museum of Women in the Arts on this groundbreaking presentation of paintings by these three legendary women," said Jennifer Goodale, director of corporate contributions for Philip Morris Management Corp. "This exhibition also celebrates cultural diversity, which is a characteristic of our grant-making program."

Additional sponsorship is provided by Hallmark Cards and Mitsubishi Motors America, Inc. Support is also provided, in part, by the following members of NMWA’s Board of Trustees: Nunda and Dr. Prakash Ambegaonkar, Dr. M.A. Ruda Brickfield and Mr. Peter J.P. Brickfield, Mary and Ameane Choksi, Wilhelmina and Wallace Holladay, Mr. and Mrs. Climis G. Lascaris, Dr. and Mrs. Alfred John Luessenhop, Mr. and Mrs. Frederic V. Malek, The Honorable Mary V. Mochary, Irene Natividad, and The Smothers Foundation.

The exhibition’s education and public programs are supported by a major grant from Bank of America Foundation.

"Bank of America supports the arts because cultural outreach is an important component of a rich and diverse community," said William Couper, president, Bank of America Greater Washington. "We support arts education, arts organizations, and programs because they go a long way toward improving the quality of life in communities as well as foster their cultural and historic preservation. That’s why we are proud to support the Places of Their Own exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts."

Programs related to the exhibition will include lectures, films, literary events, and family programs. Highlights include films on the life and work of Frida Kahlo, lectures on Georgia O’Keeffe and Emily Carr, readings by Mexico’s Carmen Boullosa and Canada’s Eden Robinson, and free programs for children ages six to 12 on the first Sundays of March, April, and May. Call the NMWA Education Department at 202.783.7370 for tickets and a complete schedule.

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