Food for the Soul: London Exhibition “Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920”
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Food for the Soul: London Exhibition “Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920”

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By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout This summer, the Tate Gallery in London is presenting an exhibition entitled “Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920,” showcasing 400 years of women creating art in Great Britain. Some of them, like Artemisia Gentileschi and Angelika Kauffmann, came from other countries in search of clients…

Food for the Soul: Stories of Women at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
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Food for the Soul: Stories of Women at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

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By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Philadelphia’s main art museum was established in 1876 as part of the centennial celebration of the Declaration of Independence. Since then, the Philadelphia Museum of Art (we’ll call it PMA for short) has been expanding its catalog to its current grand total of almost a quarter of a…

Food for the Soul: Women Alone – Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum
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Food for the Soul: Women Alone – Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum

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By Nina Heyn — Your Culture Scout The sold-out, long-touted, once-in-a-lifetime Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is in full swing—crowds of lucky ticket-holders are thronging through a few small rooms. But perhaps this is the right space to exhibit these intimate, delicate pictures that hung forgotten for 200 years until they became the…

Food for the Soul: Guo Pei Exhibition — San Francisco
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Food for the Soul: Guo Pei Exhibition — San Francisco

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By Nina Heyn — Your Culture Scout Art museums sometimes showcase outstanding fashion designs, often presenting historical collections of artists who long ago earned their place in the pantheon of couture. Over the last few years, I have seen Chanel, Galliano, and Yves St. Laurent retrospectives in Paris, an Alexander McQueen show that is currently…

Food for the Soul: Women Art Exhibitions—Venice and Paris
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Food for the Soul: Women Art Exhibitions—Venice and Paris

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By Nina Heyn — Your Culture Scout In recent years, exhibitions of women’s art have gained so much popularity that almost every week there is a local exhibition somewhere in the world. Predictably, the most ambitious shows tend to be hosted in the global art centers of Paris and Venice. Two important exhibitions focused on…

Food for the Soul: Women Who Gave Us van Gogh – Women & Art Series 16
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Food for the Soul: Women Who Gave Us van Gogh – Women & Art Series 16

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By Nina Heyn — Your Culture Scout Paris at the end of the 19th century was packed with sophisticated men who loved art. They were making it, discussing it, and selling it. There were those who created new styles—like Monet, Gauguin, or Cézanne. Others excelled as art dealers, like marchand Paul Durand-Ruel, who handled sales…

Food for the Soul: The Neglected Art of Pastels – Rosalba Carriera – Women & Art Series 15
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Food for the Soul: The Neglected Art of Pastels – Rosalba Carriera – Women & Art Series 15

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By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout There are some languages, like German, Polish, and Latin, that have many grammatical cases (so-called declensions) and three genders. You must know exactly what you are going to say before you say your sentence, or it will never come out right. You cannot change your mind halfway. Painting…

Food for the Soul: Isabella Stewart Gardner – Women & Art Series 14
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Food for the Soul: Isabella Stewart Gardner – Women & Art Series 14

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By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout March 18, 1990 was the St. Patrick’s Day holiday in Boston. The streets were full of revelers, and the police had their hands full with traffic control. Two mustachioed policemen who knocked on the doors of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Fenway Street were readily admitted by…

Food for the Soul: Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney – Women & Art Series 13
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Food for the Soul: Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney – Women & Art Series 13

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Robert Henri. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, 1916. Oil on canvas. Whitney Museum of American Art. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout In a press release issued in 1930, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney announced that she was launching a museum of American art because “…not only can the visiting foreigner find no adequate presentation…

Food for the Soul – Georgia O’Keeffe: Women & Art Series 12
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Food for the Soul – Georgia O’Keeffe: Women & Art Series 12

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Georgia O’Keeffe. Pelvis with the distance, 1943. Oil on canvas. Indianapolis Museum of Art, Newfields, IN. © Indianapolis Museum of Art/Gift of Anne Marmon Greenleaf in memory of Caroline M. Fesler. Photo: Bridgeman Images © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Adagp, Paris, 2021, courtesy of Centre Pompidou “I’ll paint what I see – what the flower is to…

Food for the Soul: Magdalena Abakanowicz – Women & Art Series 11
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Food for the Soul: Magdalena Abakanowicz – Women & Art Series 11

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Magdalena Abakanowicz. Abakan Orange, 1971. Sisal. Jankilevitsch Collection. Photo: Marcin Koniak/Desa Unicum, Courtesy of National Museum Poznań By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout “Art does not solve problems but makes us aware of their existence. It opens our eyes to see and our brain to imagine.” ~ Magdalena Abakanowicz In 1962, a young woman…

Food for the Soul: Barbara Hepworth – Women Artists Series 9
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Food for the Soul: Barbara Hepworth – Women Artists Series 9

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Barbara Hepworth. Sphere with Inner Form, 1963. Bronze. Barbara Hepworth Museum, St. Ives, UK. Photo: image (c)2003 Graham Rogers at Wikipedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Imagine that you are a mother of a four-year-old boy as well as newborn, underweight triplets. You are living in a damp, badly heated basement in…

Food for the Soul – Julie Mehretu – Women & Art Series 8
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Food for the Soul – Julie Mehretu – Women & Art Series 8

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Julie Mehretu. Stadia II (2004). Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg; gift of Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn and Nicolas Rohatyn and A.W. Mellon Acquisition Endowment Fund 2004.50. Photo: Courtesy the Carnegie Museum via the Whitney. © Julie Mehretu By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout The joint exhibition of the Whitney Museum of American Art and Los…

Food for the Soul – Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun – Women Artists Series 7
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Food for the Soul – Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun – Women Artists Series 7

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Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun. Self-Portrait, 1791. Oil on canvas. National Trust, Ickworth House, UK. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout When we think of the French upper classes just before the French Revolution, what comes to mind are those impossible panniered gowns, powdered wigs, rouged cheeks, and ostrich feathers. Which is…

Food for the Soul: Olga Boznańska – Women Artists Series 6
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Food for the Soul: Olga Boznańska – Women Artists Series 6

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Olga Boznańska. Self-Portrait, 1908. Pastel, gouache on cardboard. National Museum, Warsaw. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Even casual museumgoers are familiar with such female artists as Georgia O’Keeffe or Mary Cassatt—celebrated painters whose art is prominently displayed in major Western galleries. Fewer art lovers are familiar with someone like Olga…

Food for the Soul: Hilma af Klint, the first abstractionist. Women Artists Series 5
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Food for the Soul: Hilma af Klint, the first abstractionist. Women Artists Series 5

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Hilma af Klint. Self-Portrait, date of painting unknown. Oil on canvas. Hilma af Klint Foundation. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout The fact that painter Hilma af Klint has been unknown in the history of modern art is not that surprising. That even now she remains unknown is a bit more…

Food for the Soul- Women at Work, Part V – Princesses and Servants
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Food for the Soul- Women at Work, Part V – Princesses and Servants

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Book of the City of Ladies. Christine de Pizan (c. 1405). Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout We do not know who illustrated the Book of the City of Ladies, but we know the author: Christine de Pizan (or de Pisan). This miniature portrays her as…

Food for the Soul: Women at Work- IV – The Toil
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Food for the Soul: Women at Work- IV – The Toil

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Jewish Woman with Oranges. Alexander Gierymski (1881). National Museum Warsaw. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout There is nothing attractive about toil—this mind-numbing effort of farming or doing some menial, repetitive tasks—to the person who is doing it. It can however, be appealing to artists as a subject, especially if such…

Food for the Soul: Women at Work Part III – Out in the World
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Food for the Soul: Women at Work Part III – Out in the World

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Land Girls Hoeing. Manly Edward MacDonald (1918-19). Canada War Museum. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Women have not always been stuck at home just sewing and running households. They have also been out in the fields as farmers or trading in the markets as merchants. Industrialization brought women into cities,…

Food for the Soul: Women at Work Part II – At Home
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Food for the Soul: Women at Work Part II – At Home

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Part A Young Woman Sewing. Nicolaes Maes (1655). Harold Samuel Collection, © City of London Corporation, London. Photo: Wikimedia Commons By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout This is the second part in our series on women at work—this time captured in their most accessible milieu—working at home. The tasks depicted may be some of…

Food for the Soul – Women at Work Part I – Masterpieces
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Food for the Soul – Women at Work Part I – Masterpieces

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Birth of the Virgin. Domenico Ghirlandaio (1479-85). Santa Maria Novella, Florence. Photo: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout The majority of figures in paintings, especially those created before the 20th century, are male. The paintings show men heroically fighting or representing religious or mythological figures, men hunting, or men suffering…

Food for the Soul: Artemisia Gentileschi – Women Artists Series 4
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Food for the Soul: Artemisia Gentileschi – Women Artists Series 4

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Artemisia Gentileschi. Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (La Pittura), (about 1638-1639). Oil on canvas. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019. Photo: Courtesy of The National Gallery, London “…with me Your Illustrious Lordship will not lose and you will find the spirit of Caesar in the soul of a woman.”~…

Food for the Soul: Women at Prado – Women Artists Series 2
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Food for the Soul: Women at Prado – Women Artists Series 2

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Sofonisba Anguissola. Self-Portrait at the Easel, 1556-57. Oil on canvas. Muzeum-Zamek. Łańcut, Poland. Photo credit: Courtesy of the © Prado National Museum, Madrid, Spain. “Her paintings were celebrated for their calm and gentle style, and for the particularity that she was a woman, and had risen above the usual course of those of her sex,…