Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750
Revisiting Art History with New Feminist Scholarship and Holistic Perspectives
WASHINGTON—This fall, a landmark exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) challenges preconceptions of how Dutch and Flemish women shaped fine art and visual culture in the 17th and 18th centuries. On view from September 26, 2025, through January 11, 2026, Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750 is the first exhibition to rewrite the art history of this culturally significant era from the perspective of women artists. The exhibition highlights women artists of the time who were leading players in local and global economies, while exploring how art history often misattributed or neglected works by women artists.
Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam showcases nearly 150 artworks by 40 Dutch and Flemish women artists, including Gesina ter Borch, Maria Faydherbe, Judith Leyster, Maria van Oosterwijck, Magdalena van de Passe, Clara Peeters, Rachel Ruysch, Jeanne Vergouwen, Michaelina Wautier and others. The exhibition also centers the work of unnamed makers, whose skilled textile production drove the economy. Works on view encompass paintings, prints, sculpture, paper cuttings, embroidery and lace, with many exhibited in the U.S. for the first time.
Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam is organized by NMWA in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium, and will travel to Ghent from March 7 through May 31, 2026. It is co-curated by Virginia Treanor, NMWA senior curator, and Frederica van Dam, curator of old masters, Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent. The exhibition’s premiere in Washington, D.C., features loaned works from more than 50 public institutions and private collections, including the Amsterdam Museum; Art Institute of Chicago; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum Gouda, Netherlands; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Prado Museum, Madrid; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; and Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
“This exhibition marks a watershed moment. By shining a new light on cultural and economic histories, we can recover remarkable lost legacies,” said NMWA Director Susan Fisher Sterling. “The work of women artists was highly regarded and essential to the artistic culture of the 17th and 18th centuries across the Netherlands and Belgium, driving what was then one of the most world’s powerful economies. Due to a mix of cultural and institutional biases, art historians left the names of women artists out of the books. Fortunately, through groundbreaking shows such as this one, that history is being reconsidered, so fuller and more complex stories can finally be told.”
Reclaiming the Legacies of Women Artists
Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750 focuses on the period formerly known as the “Dutch Golden Age,” an outdated term that obscures the circumstances that gave rise to the region’s luxury economy: devastating colonialism abroad and rigid social hierarchies at home. During this time, women participated in nearly every artistic medium and genre, making vital contributions in a variety of areas of cultural production. They were valued participants in the artistic economy, involved in the manufacture and sale of goods that were central to the unprecedented economic success of the Low Countries (present-day Belgium and the Netherlands).
“Many people are familiar with the male artists of this period, such as Rembrandt and Vermeer, yet few have heard of even the most prominent women artists who worked during this time,” said exhibition curator and NMWA Senior Curator Virginia Treanor. “While there have been a few recent monographic exhibitions on important women artists from this region, there has never
before been a survey exhibition devoted to multiple women artists and diverse artistic mediums of the period.”
The exhibition aims to recover the cultural importance of overlooked art forms that women often excelled in, such as paper-cutting, lacemaking and embroidery. The exhibition reveals that such objects were often more expensive and highly prized than many paintings and formed an integral part of the artistic economy. By rejecting artistic hierarchies with divisions rooted in gender discrimination and reframing judgments around so-called “craft” versus “fine art,” the exhibition recontextualizes work produced by women squarely within the framework of the artistic economy of the region.
Exhibition Overview
Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750 is presented in four thematic sections. The first, Presence, demonstrates that women were honored participants in nearly all aspects of artistic culture of the era. Among the highlights on view are self-portraits by artists Judith Leyster (1609–1660), Maria Schalcken (1645–before 1700), Louise Hollandine, Princess of the Palatinate (1622–1709) and Anna Maria van Schurman (1607–1678). Women artists used self-portraiture to express their intellectual identities and promote their artistic ambitions. In her self-portrait from around 1630, Leyster portrays herself at an easel, with a paintbrush in hand and a confident expression, wearing an impressive, wide lace collar that clearly marks her wealth and status.
Portraits of women artists by others indicate the high regard in which they were held by society at large, and highlights on view include portraits of Maria de Grebber (1602–1680), Maria van Oosterwijck (1630–1693) and Catharina Backer (1689–1766). Other indicators of the achievements of women artists of the time are published artists’ biographies, such as Arnold Houbraken’s De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen first published in 1718, which includes entries on Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750), Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717) and others.
The next theme, Choices, explores the decisions available to women in this period, as opportunities for artistic advancement varied greatly based on family connections and socioeconomic status. Some—such as acclaimed painter, engraver, poet, scholar, feminist writer and polyglot Anna Maria van Schurman —came from wealthy families who encouraged their daughters’ artistic talent by apprenticing them to prominent male painters. Others were trained within family workshops. The decision to marry and have children, or not, also had profound impacts. Yet it did not affect all women in the same way; for example, Rachel Ruysch had at least ten children and a successful career that spanned six decades.
This section displays a variety of textiles, including lace, embroidery and samplers, to illuminate the training women and girls received in these culturally important but overlooked art forms. Girls of all classes were expected to learn sewing as part of their education, and those of a lower socioeconomic status could receive training in textile production as a means of supporting themselves financially. They produced incredibly ornate and complicated textiles that were traded locally and globally. This work was documented in engravings of domestic interiors by Geertruydt Roghman (1625–before 1657) that show women weaving, sewing or spinning, as well as paintings of sites of industry, such as Orphans at Work (1676), by Johannes de Maré (ca. 1640–1709).
The theme Economy illustrates the many ways in which women were integral to the artistic economy of the Low Countries, arguing that female labor was a significant factor in the unprecedented expansion of trade and the thriving art market in the 17th century. At a time when a lace collar could be more expensive than a painting, the fine textiles in the exhibition show that women produced goods that were crucial to the artistic economy. However, understanding this economic reality requires an examination of the relationship between cultural production and the era’s ever-increasing globalization, from the exploitation of slavery to opportunities afforded by the growth of colonial trade.
Artists catered to the changing tastes of buyers, such as Maria Schalcken, who painted popular domestic scenes; Joanna Vergouwen (1630–1714), who created copies of famous works for export to the Spanish colonies; and Alida Withoos (1662–1730), who created forest floor still-life scenes for collectors with an interest in “scientific subjects.” Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717) and her daughters Johanna Helena Herolt (1668– after 1723) and Dorothea Maria Graff (1678–1743) catered to the robust market for expensive, lavishly illustrated scientific volumes depicting the ecological spoils of the “New World.”
The exhibition concludes with the theme Legacy and Value, which examines how women artists have been systematically marginalized in art historical narratives over the last three centuries. One cause is the misattribution of art by women to better-known male contemporaries. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Judith Leyster’s paintings were frequently misattributed to the painter Frans Hals (1582 or 1583–1666) or to her husband, Jan Miense Molenaer (ca. 1610–1668). Some women were intentionally and actively erased from art historical narratives. The placement of Maria Schalcken’s signature on her Self-Portrait in Her Studio (ca. 1680) has a blank area before her last name, which suggests that at some point in the painting’s history, her first name was obscured. It seems likely that this was done to attribute the work to her brother, Godfried (1643–1706), as it was for the entirety of the 20th century, before being finally reattributed to Maria Schalcken in 2006.
Often, the historic importance of a woman artist’s work has been undermined and underestimated. The artist Rachel Ruysch was an innovator in flower paintings, producing deceptively realistic floral still lifes with plants, fruits, butterflies and insects. In her lifetime, she was arguably the most accomplished and well-regarded painter of the genre, and her works were expensive collector’s items. However, in the centuries that followed, history did not afford Ruysch’s art the same respect as that of her male counterparts. This injustice is slow to be repaired; her first-ever monographic exhibition is currently on view in a project organized by the Alte Pinakothek, Munich; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio.
This final section acts as a bridge between history and the present, tracing the disparity between the renown of many women artists during their lifetimes and their obscurity in art history over the course of 300 years. These women artists and those in their circles worked to secure their artistic legacies, which are finally being honored today with NMWA’s exhibition. As Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam co-curator Virginia Treanor explains, “The reframing of this era is crucial. Language matters; the way we talk about historical periods and women artists matters; it shapes our understanding of economic and gendered realities in both the past and present.”
Publication and Programming
A significant catalogue, published in both Dutch and English, accompanies the exhibition. Edited by co-curators Virginia Treanor of NMWA and Frederica Van Dam of MSK Ghent, the 304-page catalogue features new research and perspectives by Treanor and Van Dam as well as Klara Alen, Frima Fox Hofrichter, Elena Kanagy-Loux, Judith Noorman, Catherine Powell-Warren, Inez De Prekel, Marleen Puyenbroek, Oana Stan and Katie Altizer Takata. It is published by Hannibal Books.
A range of programs will bring to life diverse aspects of the exhibition, from hands-on workshops to events that reflect contemporary material culture. A press preview will take place Friday, September 19. Further details to be announced over the coming months.
Partners and Supporters
Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750 is organized in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium. The exhibition is made possible by Denise Littlefield Sobel with major leadership gifts provided by Morgan Stanley and Tara Rudman.
Additional funding is provided by Martha Lyn Dippell and Daniel L. Korengold, Lugano, Kay Woodward Olson, Patti and George White, Laurel and John Rafter, and an anonymous donor. Further support comes from Marcia Myers Carlucci, Dutch Culture USA program by the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York, Jacalyn D. Erickson, Jacqueline Badger Mars, Geri Skirkanich, Tavolozza Foundation, VisitFlanders, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Angela LoRé, Anne L. von Rosenberg, Ilene S. and Jeffrey S. Gutman, Samuel H. Kress Foundation, Charlotte and Michael Buxton, Anne N. Edwards, the Netherland-America Foundation, and Frances Luessenhop Usher.
About the Curators
Virginia Treanor, senior curator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, holds a doctorate in 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art from the University of Maryland (2012), where she studied with Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., former curator of Dutch and Flemish painting at the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, D.C. Treanor worked at the NGA from 2005 to 2008, assisting with the exhibition Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered, organized by the NGA, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Rembrandthuis Museum, Amsterdam. Treanor’s dissertation was on the role of Amalia van Solms (1602–1675) in the formation of the Stadhouder’s art collection, and she has also written on the art of Judith Leyster, Clara Peeters and Rachel Ruysch. Committed to scholarship that both elucidates and contextualizes the contributions of historical women, Treanor has also curated exhibitions on 18th-century, 19th-century, and contemporary art.
Frederica van Dam is curator of old masters at the Museum of Fine Arts (Museum voor Schone Kunsten, MSK) in Ghent, Belgium. She obtained her PhD in art history at Ghent University under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Maximiliaan Martens & Prof. Dr. Koenraad Jonckheere, with research on Flemish painters in early modern England, which resulted in a book about the Ghent painter-poet Lucas d’Heere (1534–1584). At the MSK, she is responsible for the art collection dating before the French Revolution. As team leader, she is also in charge of the museum’s exhibition department. Van Dam’s expertise focuses on Southern Netherlandish early modern painting (1500–1650) and its links with England and Italy, technical art history and connoisseurship. She co-curated the widely acclaimed 2020 exhibition Van Eyck. An Optical Revolution and was the driving force behind the first monographic exhibition and book on the Flemish artist Theodoor Rombouts (1597–1637).
National Museum of Women in the Arts
The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) is the first museum in the world solely dedicated to championing women through the arts. With its collections, exhibitions, programs and online content, the museum inspires dynamic exchanges about art and ideas. NMWA advocates for better representation of women and nonbinary artists and serves as a vital center for thought leadership, community engagement and social change. NMWA addresses the gender imbalance in the presentation of art by bringing to light important women artists of the past while promoting great women artists working today. The collection highlights a wide range of works in a variety of mediums by artists including Rosa Bonheur, Louise Bourgeois, Lalla Essaydi, Lavinia Fontana, Frida Kahlo, Hung Liu, Zanele Muholi, Faith Ringgold, Niki de Saint Phalle and Amy Sherald.
NMWA is located at 1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. It is open Tues.–Sun., 10 a.m.–5 p.m. and closed on Mondays and select holidays. Admission is $16 for adults, $13 for D.C. residents and visitors 70 and over, and free for visitors 21 and under. Admission is free the first Sunday and second Wednesday of each month. For information, call 202-783-5000, visit nmwa.org, Broad Strokes blog, Facebook or Instagram.
Media Contacts
National Museum of Women in the Arts
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Nicole Straus Public Relations
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