women in art

I found Charlotte Streifer Rubenstein's American Women Artists at the Chicago Rare Book Center in Evanston a couple of years ago.  It was a blazing June day and a friend of mine was selling jewelry at the Custer Street Art Fair, so I went into the bookstore to browse and escape the heat.  The friendly staff gave me a chilled glass of white wine, and they had air conditioning and a wealth of wonderful books that kept me happy for the next hour.  I spotted American Women Artists on my way out, bought it on impulse and have enjoyed it ever since.

American Women Artists was originally published in 1982 and is time-limited, but otherwise it's a fine anthology beginning with Native American works and spanning through to the late 20th century.  There have been so many great American women artists, and this book is an excellent starting point to discover their lives and talents and the creative movements they were part of.  Yes, we know Mary Cassatt, Georgia O'Keeffe and Grandma Moses, but how about Jane Stuart, Sarah Goodridge, Cecilia Beaux, Lilla Cabot Perry, Marguerite Zorach, Grace Hartigan, Isabel Bishop, Malvina Hoffman, Agnes Tait, Romaine Brooks, Kay Sage, Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel and Janet Fish?  And there are plenty of other names within the 560 pages (along with color and black and white reproductions), and anyone truly interested in American women in art should really seek out this book as a resource. 

When I was a child, there weren't roles available for women then in the arts, really. The most imaginative thing they could think of would be a school teacher, which is what my aunt was.  -- Grace Hartigan (1922-2008)