From The Collection

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.
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NMWA at the National Gallery: Modern Visions
Posted: April 27, 2022
Category: From The Collection
Just a mile from their home at NMWA, 11 collection works are on display at the National Gallery. Learn about works by Frida Kahlo, Eva Hesse, and Amy Sherald as...
Wearing a bright yellow apron-style dress with strawberries and lace-trim details, an expressionless young woman with medium-dark skin tone rendered in grayscale stares out with her hands in her dress pockets. Her head is cocked to one side against an intensely pink-colored background.

NMWA at the National Gallery: Historical Heroines
Posted: April 20, 2022
Category: From The Collection
Just a mile from their home at NMWA, 11 collection works are on display at the National Gallery. Learn about works by Sarah Miriam Peale and Cecilia Beaux as presented...
Realistic half-portrait of a light-skinned woman, set against a dark background, with her face brightly illuminated as she gazes directly at the viewer. She is clad in dark Victorian dress with her hair pinned up under a hat adorned with a red velvet bow.

Collection on the Move: Faith Ringgold
Posted: April 13, 2022
Category: From The Collection
This spring, New York City's New Museum presents Faith Ringgold: American People, which features NMWA's own American Collection #4: Jo Baker’s Bananas (1997).
Colorful quilt with a multi-patterned background that depicts five medium skin toned, bare breasted dancing women wearing skirts of bananas and yellow necklaces. Below, from left to right, a medium-dark skin toned and light skin toned men and women interact and play brass instruments.

Recent Acquisitions: Highlights from FY21
Posted: December 1, 2021
Category: From The Collection
During the recent fiscal year, major acquisitions of works by artists including Emma Amos, Deborah Butterfield, and Delita Martin embodied NMWA’s mission to celebrate diverse women artists.
A dark-skinned adult woman seen from the hips up rendered in brownish-black ink on light tan paper, framed in a square. She wears a striped, one-piece bathing suit and a white cap. She leans on her left arm on a towel on white planks, and her right hand is on her hip with her elbow out.

Collection on the Move: Loïs Mailou Jones and Céline Marie Tabary
Posted: November 10, 2021
Category: From The Collection
Works by Loïs Mailou Jones (1905–1998) and Céline Marie Tabary (1908–1993), on view in Alma W. Thomas: Everything Is Beautiful, help to tell the story of Thomas as a part...
Beneath a soft blue sky, a picturesque village nestles in a valley between a river in the extreme foreground and verdant mountains. Combining loose and discrete brushstrokes with a palette of greens and golds, the painting recalls Paul Cézanne’s late 19th-century landscapes.

Recent Acquisitions: Rania Matar
Posted: August 18, 2021
Category: From The Collection
NMWA Assistant Curator Orin Zahra examines photographer Rania Matar's "SHE" series, from which three photographs are now part of the museum's collection.
A light-skinned young woman with long, dark brown hair in a black, long lace sleeved dress stands confidently in a crumbling loggia. She gazes at the viewer with a serious, captivating look.

Collection on the Move: Alice Neel
Posted: August 11, 2021
Category: From The Collection
NMWA Associate Curator Virginia Treanor examines Alice Neel's T.B. Harlem (1940), part of NMWA's collection and currently on view in Alice Neel: People Come First at the Metropolitan Museum of...
A sick man with medium skin tone lies on a bed with purple bedding and stares out with a dignified expression. The left side of his chest is misshapen and covered with a white bandage. Thick outlines define his body and highlights on his arms and face accentuate his frail frame.

Built to Order: The Constructed World in NMWA’s Collection
Posted: July 27, 2021
Category: From The Collection
Artists represented in NMWA’s “Built to Order” gallery construct environments of their own making, reflecting familiar and unfamiliar vantage points and revealing our power to shape the world around us.
A color photograph of a young light skinned girl with light blonde hair. The girl peeks out from a fort made from a dark blue and purple comforter. A light pink and purple stuffed unicorn sits on a purple and white floral rug in front of the fort. A purple, blue, white, and black paper butterfly-shaped kite hangs on the wall above the fort.

#5WomenArtists in SoHo Women Artists
Posted: March 29, 2021
Category: From The Collection
Get to know five women artists—Harmony Hammond, Louise Bourgeois, Joyce Kozloff, Miriam Schapiro, and Sarah Charlesworth— who are depicted in SoHo Women Artists (1978), by May Stevens.
Life-sized, full-length portraits of 12 individuals form a frieze-like composition against a saturated lapis-blue background. Most of those portrayed are noted feminist artists and critics. Details from the artist's earlier paintings appear above and to t

Wilhelmina Cole Holladay’s #5WomenArtists
Posted: March 24, 2021
Category: From The Collection
NMWA founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay (1922–2021) was a visionary collector of great art by women. Get to know five of her favorite modern and contemporary artists from the museum’s collection.
Wilhelmina Cole Holladay leans against a railing with a slight smile. She is a light-skinned, older woman with short, gray hair, and she wears a collared white shirt and black cardigan. Ornate chandeliers can be seen behind her.