Artist Spotlight

View of the museum from outside showing the Neoclassical building from one corner. The building is a tan-colored stone with an arched doorway, long vertical windows, and detailed molding around the roof.

Anita Steckel: Equal Exposure

Posted: January 13, 2014
Category: Artist Spotlight
In the 1960s and 1970s, Anita Steckel fought for the public acceptance of explicitly sexual art made by women, as part of the broader feminist art movement that was pushing...
A book is lying in a glass case. The book shows text and a black-and-white photographic portrait of a woman's face.

A Case of Mistaken Identity? Spotlight on Lilla Cabot Perry

Posted: November 19, 2013
Category: Artist Spotlight
Lady with a Bowl of Violets (ca. 1910) has been called one of NMWA’s “best-loved works.”
A young woman sits on a chair with her hair in a loose bun, wearing a white lace-trim gown. Her body turns slightly right towards a fireplace, its orange glow reflected on her hair and torso. The room is light and clean and a dark bowl overflowing with violets sits on the mantle.

Ellen Day Hale: Traveling Adventurously

Posted: November 13, 2013
Category: Artist Spotlight
Ellen Day Hale can be seen as a woman artist who was given opportunities not afforded to many other women of her time, showing the huge artistic benefits conferred by...

Dominating with Depth: Faith Ringgold

Posted: November 6, 2013
Category: Artist Spotlight
As an artist, Faith Ringgold has always worked to tell her story. She created bold, provocative paintings during the 1960s, directly responding to the Civil Rights and feminist movements.

Fluid Identities: The “Parts” and “Projects” of Nikki Lee

Posted: November 1, 2013
Category: Artist Spotlight
Color photograph of a street scene. Red brick buildings with colorful awnings are on the right and a smiling woman on the left. She holds the arm of a companion who has been cropped out of the left side of the image.

Children of Two Worlds: Audrey Niffenegger's Hybrid Creatures: Part 2 of 2

Posted: October 25, 2013
Category: Artist Spotlight
On view at NMWA through November 10, in Awake in the Dream World, Audrey Niffenegger’s work includes an array of fantastical, surreal, and dreamlike creatures. One of Niffenegger’s artistic and...

Children of Two Worlds: Audrey Niffenegger’s Hybrid Creatures: Part 1 of 2

Posted: October 24, 2013
Category: Artist Spotlight
The visual novels of Audrey Niffenegger (b. 1963) are replete with curiously concocted creatures that serve as the primary narrative tools for advancing her bizarre, dreamlike tales.

First Ladies, Abstracted in Textile

Posted: October 17, 2013
Category: Artist Spotlight
Just a few city blocks from the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the White House famously serves as the residence for the President and his (or someday, her)...
Close-up detail of a larger abstract artwork features thick black paint meticulously applied in small neat rectangles alternating orientation to form a grid. There is a minuscule amount of space between the tiles that allows a pink background to show through.

Audrey Niffenegger's Self-Portraits: Fiction or Autobiography?

Posted: October 8, 2013
Category: Artist Spotlight
“The self-portrait is like writing in the first person…There are a variety of ways to use it,” Audrey Niffenegger has said. Within NMWA’s Niffenegger exhibition, Awake in the Dream World,...

The Audrey Niffenegger Book Club

Posted: October 3, 2013
Category: Artist Spotlight
Though Audrey Niffenegger may be best known for her 2003 novel The Time Traveler’s Wife, the “Adventures in Bookland” gallery in NMWA’s current exhibition of her work showcases her sensational...