A look inside the National Museum of Women in the Arts after its major renovation

Jeffrey Brown:

The museum, the first in the U.S. solely dedicated to women, was founded in 1987 by Wilhelmina Cole Holladay in what had been a Masonic temple, ironically a building from which women were once barred.

As the story goes, on visits to European museums, Holladay and her husband admired the work of 17th century Flemish artist Clara Peeters, a contemporary of Rembrandt, but were shocked to find no mention of her in art history books. They set about to collect art by women, which became the basis for the museum.

Now its galleries are arranged around themes showing how women have tackled certain subjects, materials, even colors over time. Artists of the past such as Lavinia Fontana, Frida Kahlo, Berthe Morisot are connected to contemporaries such as Petrina Hicks, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and Faith Ringgold.

There are artists such as Amy Sherald, whom the museum showed before she became well-known for her portrait of Michelle Obama, and large-scale works by artists including Sonya Clark, Alison Saar, and Rina Banerjee in a special inaugural exhibition Katie Wat curated titled The Sky’s the Limit.