The Skagen Terrain: Land and Sea Paintings

“Skagen was a magical city of beaches entirely surrounded by water,” writes Skagens museum curator Mette Bogh Jensen in the exhibition catalogue. 

As one of the thematic sections of A World Apart: Anna Ancher and the Skagen Art Colony, “Land and Sea” showcases the artists’ fascination with the unspoiled landscape of the seaside town.

Carl Locher, The mail coach, 1885, Oil on canvas, 23 ⅝ x 37 ¾ in.; Skagens Museum

Skagen’s beaches, fields, and “special light,” were well-suited for artists who wanted to pursue painting en plein air, or outdoors.

Adventurous artists and visitors traveling to remote Skagen had to spend the better part of a day in a horse-drawn carriage along the shore, as depicted in Carl Locher’s The mail coach. The thickly impastoed scene shows sandy dunes with a carriage approaching in the distance.

Among the most dramatic depictions of outdoor subjects are large-scale scenes of fishermen at work, often presenting turbulent seas and thunderous clouds. Painters such as P.S. Krøyer found themselves frequently frustrated by the weather: they couldn’t easily work outside during storms, but on calm-weathered days when they were eager to paint from life, their models—fishermen from the town—needed to be working at sea.

Michael Ancher, A stroll on the beach, 1896, Oil on canvas, 27 ⅛ x 63 ⅜ in.; Skagens Museum

However, Skagen’s beach also became a place of leisure and recreation after an increase in tourism in 1890. Michael Ancher’s A stroll on the beach perpetuates this idealized view of Skagen life by showing middle-class women enjoying the bucolic setting.

Furthermore, sea views were not the only nature scenes worth depicting. Skagen also had fertile fields where farmers grew a variety of grains.

Anna Ancher, Harvesters, 1905, Oil on canvas, 17 ⅛ x 22 ⅛ in.; Skagens Museum

In The Harvesters, Anna Ancher portrays laborers returning from the fields. She was “the only Skagen painter who painted the cultivated landscapes,” as Jensen revealed in a gallery talk.

Skagen’s terrain was both rugged and pastoral, providing the burgeoning artist colony with a plethora of compelling subject matter.

—Emily Haight is the publications and marketing/communication intern at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. 

Women & Presidential Inaugurations

Although a woman has never—yet—taken the Presidential Oath of Office, the only woman to administer the oath was Sarah T. Hughes, a U.S. district judge who swore Lyndon Johnson into office on Air Force One after the death of President John F. Kennedy.

How have women been involved in inaugural ceremonies?

• 1909: Helen Herron Taft became the first First Lady to accompany her husband, William H. Taft, on the return ride from the U.S. Capitol to the White House following his inauguration.
• 1917: Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated, marking the first time that women participated in the Inaugural parade. Edith Bolling Galt Wilson was the first First Lady to accompany the President both to and from the Capitol. Read her diary entry.
• 2009: President Barack Obama’s first inaugural included the first time a woman, Senator Dianne Feinstein, emceed the ceremony.

Aretha Franklin singing at President Obama’s 2009 inauguration

Women musicians have often been asked to perform at inaugural events. Some fun facts about a few recent inaugural performers:

• 1981: Amateur singer Juanita Booker of Los Angeles was asked by President Ronald Reagan to perform at his first inauguration.
• 1985: Opera singer Jessye Norman performed for President Reagan’s second inauguration. She would return to the inaugural stage in 1997 to sing a medley of songs for President Bill Clinton’s second inauguration.
• 1993: President Clinton used Fleetwood Mac’s song “Don’t Stop” for his campaign, and it was performed by the band (with headliner Stevie Nicks) at the 42nd Presidential Inaugural Gala.
• 1968, 2009, 2011: Aretha Franklin has an extensive political-performance history. In 1968, the Queen of Soul sang the National Anthem at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and sang “Precious Lord” at the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the same year. She later sang “Precious Lord” at the dedication of King’s memorial in Washington in 2011. Franklin received the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush. Most recently, she famously sang “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” at President Obama’s first inauguration in 2009.

This year, Beyoncé will sing the National Anthem, James Taylor will sing “America the Beautiful,” and Kelly Clarkson will sing “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.”  Katy Perry and Alicia Keys will also be part of the festivities. Who can guess what 2017 will bring?

A Look at Motherhood in Royalists to Romantics

In Royalists to Romantics: Women Artists from the Louvre, Versailles, and Other French National Collections, 77 works by 35 artists display the talents of French Revolution-era women artists. Their paintings are windows into their careers and the singular challenges of their time. The catalogue that NMWA has published to illustrate Royalists to Romantics includes essays as well as individual artist biographies that give insight into the lives of women artists working in France between 1750 and 1848. For additional information, visit nmwa.org, or purchase the catalogue from the Museum Shop by calling 877-226-5294.

Marguerite Gerard, Motherhood, ca. 1804; Oil on convas; Musee des Beaux-Arts

Several paintings in our current exhibition, Royalists to Romantics, depict the bond of motherhood. There are portraits of families huddled together, children seeking their mothers’ arms, and mothers watching dutifully over sleeping infants. This depiction of women as caring mothers is seemingly traditional; however, it actually opposed what many male artists in the Neoclassicist movement portrayed. While female artists painted mothers as loving family matrons, male artists focused on the female nude as the ideal woman.

French art in the late 18th century was moving out of the playful Rococo style and back toward classical Greek and Roman ideals of beauty, symmetry, and poise. As a result, paintings’ themes began to shift and the female nude, reclined and draped in a Greek-style robe, was once again resurfacing as a popular subject. Artists like Marguerite Gerard, Marie Genevieve Bouliar, and Louise Marie Jeanne Hersent challenged this recurring theme by painting not women on their beds, but women watching over their infants’ cradles. By focusing on these subjects, the artists asserted that women had more worth than their physiques, which male artists often presented for voyeurs.

Louise Marie Jeanne Hersent, The Good Mother, ca. 1815; Oil on canvas; Château-Musée de Dieppe

One such painting is The Good Mother, by Louise Hersent, more famously known as Louise Mauduit. While many of her best-known works were inspired by historical events from the 16th to 18th centuries, the theme of The Good Mother, completed in 1815, is simple. It features a mother gazing lovingly at her sleeping child who sprawls out in a cradle. From the title alone, we know that Hersent has painted what society deems to be the picture of a “good” mother. The woman holds her hands clasped and inclines her head serenely, displaying complete attentiveness to the baby. She holds a pair of eyeglasses and a piece of paper in her hands, which symbolize an education that she will surely pass onto the child. Clearly, by the state of the room, this woman also has a means of providing for the child. She is also young and traditionally attractive. This may be one version of a “good mother,” but it is clearly simplistic and idealized.

Perhaps, though, Hersent was onto something. While the empire waist of the woman’s dress and the pose of the infant are in keeping with 18th-century French standards, there are elements suggesting that this painting evokes the French past, rather than the present; thus undermining the entire “goodness” that is suggested. Elements of the past include the lyre, an ancient instrument, which leans against a taboret in the background, and the mother’s spiky collar, which was popular in 17th-century France. There is a possibility that Hersent wanted to emphasize changing societal standards, and present this “good mother” as an ideal of the past. She may have been evoking simple nostalgia for the recent past. As a viewer, do you see any ambiguity in this painting?

While artists like Louise Hersent challenged the era of Neoclassicism and the ideal woman, they also reinforced the “angel in the house” stereotype. Instead of liberating women from patriarchal society and the male gaze, Hersent and others confined women to childbirth and domestic life. Still, these women artists deserve credit for using their power to create works from the perspective of women in a time when they were the silent minority.

—Kristie Landing is the publications and communications intern at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Royalists to Romantics: Spotlight on Marie Victoire Lemoine

In Royalists to Romantics: Women Artists from the Louvre, Versailles, and Other French National Collections, 77 works by 35 artists display the talents of French Revolution-era women artists. Their paintings are windows into their careers and the singular challenges of their time. The catalogue that NMWA has published to illustrate Royalists to Romantics includes essays as well as individual artist biographies that give insight into the lives of women artists working in France between 1750 and 1848. This excerpt explores the life of one the show’s featured artists, Marie Victoire Lemoine. For additional information, visit www.nmwa.org, or purchase the catalogue from the Museum Shop by calling 877-226-5294.

Marie Victoire Lemoine (1754-1820), Portrait of the Artist, ca. 1780/1790. Oil on canvas. Musée des beaux-arts, Orléans

Marie Victoire Lemoine led a remarkably quiet existence in one of history’s most tumultuous eras. Born into the middle-class home of Charles Lemoine and Marie Anne Rousselle, Lemoine never married, living with family throughout her life.¹ She was the eldest of four daughters, three of whom were practicing artists (including Nisa Villlers, née Marie-Denise Lemoine, 1774 – 1821).² She exhibited sporadically and attracted only occasional notice. Yet she produced a stunning, if enigmatic, oeuvre that is still being pieced together.

Lemoine studied with the history painter François Guillaume Ménageot (1744 – 1816), a member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture.³ She is also said to have taken lessons from Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun, who with her husband owned the home where Ménageot lived.⁴ Indeed, Joseph Baillio, who has compiled a catalogue of Lemoine’s work, observes that Lemoine’s portraits and allegories are closer in spirit to those of Vigée-LeBrun than to the more dramatic canvases of Ménageot.⁵

Visitors in the galleries on the Member Preview Day for Royalists to Romantics

That the first painting Lemoine exhibited was a portrait (untraced) of the princesse de Lamballe — a favorite of Queen Marie-Antoinette — suggests connections at court; Lemoine sent the work to Pahin de la Blancherie’s Salon de la Correspondance in 1779.⁶ Commissions also came from the circle of the duc de Chartres (who later became the duc d’Orléans); Lemoine’s portrait of the young Mademoiselle de Chartres (untraced) appeared in Pahin’s rooms in 1785. Lemoine is represented in the current exhibition by another work from the 1780s, an allegory of painting presumed to be a self- portrait. Here a youthful female figure dressed in a white, classically inspired robe and wearing violets in her hair appears seated at, but turning away from, an easel. The attributes of painting are all present, but none is in use: the figure’s right hand rests on an upright maulstick, and her left hand steadies a palette that rests on her lap along with a group of large paintbrushes.

Lemoine made her Salon debut in 1796, exhibiting three genre paintings and a selection of miniatures. One of these, her best-remembered work, is now in the collection of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which gives it the title Atelier of a Painter, Probably Madame Vigée Le Brun (1755 – 1842), and Her Pupil.⁷ She would go on to display portraits and genre scenes at the Salons of 1798, 1799, 1802, 1804, and 1814.

Notes

1. The biographical information included here is based on Joseph Baillio, “Vie et oeuvre de Marie Victoire Lemoine (1754 – 1820),” Gazette des beaux-arts, 6th ser., 127 (January 1996), pp. 125 – 64; Margaret A. Oppenheimer, “Women Artists in Paris, 1791 – 1841” (PhD diss., New York University, 1996), pp. 222 – 24; and Mary D. Sheriff, “Lemoine, Marie-Victoire,” in Dictionary of Women Artists, ed. Delia Gaze (London, 1997), vol. 2, pp. 836 – 39.

2. On Villers, see Margaret A. Oppenheimer, “Nisa Villers, née Lemoine (1774 – 1821),” Gazette des beaux-arts, 6th ser., 127 (January 1996), pp. 165 – 80. On Menageot, see Nicole Willk-Brocard, Francois-Guillaume Menageot, 1744 – 1816: Peintre d’histoire, directeur de l’Academie de France a Rome (Paris, 1978).

3. On Ménageot, see Nicole Willk-Brocard, François-Guillaume Ménageot, 1744-1816: Peintre d’histoire, directeur de l’Académie de France à Rome (Paris, 1978).

4. On Lemoine’s studying with Vigée-LeBrun, see Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, eds., Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1929), vol. 23, p. 34.

5. Baillio, “Marie Victoire Lemoine,” p. 126.

6. The portraits of the princesse de Lamballe and Mademoiselle de Chartres are listed as untraced in Mary D. Sheriff, “Marie-Victoire Lemoine,” 2005 entry in Dictionnaire des femmes de l’ancienne France,
http://www.siefar.org/dictionnaire/fr/Marie-Victoire_Lemoine
.

7. Illustrated, with the title Interior of the Atelier of a Woman Painter, in Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin, Women Artists, 1550 – 1950, exh. cat. (New York, 1976), p. 188, no.

Royalists to Romantics: Spotlight on Rose Adélaïde Ducreux

In Royalists to Romantics: Women Artists from the Louvre, Versailles, and Other French National Collections, 77 works by 35 artists display the talents of French Revolution-era women artists. Their paintings are windows into their careers and the singular challenges of their time. The catalogue that NMWA has published to illustrate Royalists to Romantics includes essays as well as individual artist biographies that give insight into the lives of women artists working in France between 1750 and 1848. This excerpt explores the life of one the show’s featured artists, Rose Adélaïde Ducreux. For additional information, visit nmwa.org, or purchase the catalogue from the Museum Shop online.

Rose Adélaïde Ducreux (1762-1802), Portrait of the Artist, ca. 1799. Oil on canvas. Musée des beaux-arts, Rouen

Rose Adélaïde Ducreux was the eldest of six children in the Parisian household of portraitist Joseph Ducreux (1735 – 1802) and his wife, Philippine Rose Cosse.¹ Having learned to paint in her father’s studio, Ducreux participated in her first exhibition in 1786. That January she sent a self-portrait to one of the biweekly exhibitions organized by the entrepreneur known as Pahin de la Blancherie in his commercial venue, the Salon de la Correspondance. Her father, whose difficult personality had evidently prevented him from winning admission to the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, also exhibited occasionally at this alternative space.

Father and daughter made their joint debut at the Louvre Salon in 1791, when Académie membership ceased being a prerequisite for participation. Rose Ducreux displayed two paintings: a portrait of a young woman and a life-size, standing self-portrait, painted in a Neoclassical style, depicting the artist playing a harp, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.² She went on to exhibit at the Louvre in 1793, 1795, 1798, and 1799, showing at least a half dozen paintings and studies, most of which remain untraced. The self-portrait in the current exhibition is dated to around 1799 based on its furnishings and fashions: the white, unstructured, néo-grec dress, the mustard-colored cashmere shawl, and the saber-shaped chair legs all point to this period.

In 1801 Ducreux became engaged to François- Jacques Lequoy de Montgiraud (1748 – 1804), a colonial prefect sent by Napoléon to Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti) to help restore order on the island, which was in the throes of revolution.³ After crossing the Atlantic, she contracted typhoid fever and died in 1802.

Notes

1. This biography is based on Joseph Baillio, “Une artiste méconnue, Rose Adélaïde Ducreux,” L’oeil 399 (October 1988), pp. 20 – 27; Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, online edition, updated May 18, 2010, http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/DucreuxR.pdf; and Margaret A. Oppenheimer, “Women Artists in Paris, 1791 – 1814” (PhD diss., New York University, 1996), pp. 171 – 72. On Joseph Ducreux, see Neil Jeffares, “Ducreux, Joseph,” Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, online edition, updated March 23, 2011, http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/Ducreux.pdf; and Georgette Lyon, Joseph Ducreux, premier peintre de Marie-Antoinette (1735 – 1802): Sa vie, son oeuvre (Paris, 1958).

2. Jean-François Heim, Claire Béraud, and Philippe Heim, Les salons de peinture de la Révolution française, 1789 – 1799 (Paris, 1989), p. 194.

3. On Lequoy de Montgiraud in Saint-Domingue, see Jean-Marcel Champion, “30 Floréal Year x: The Restoration of Slavery by Bonaparte,” in The Abolitions of Slavery: From L. L. F. Sonthonax to Victor Schoelcher, 1793, 1794, 1848, ed. Marcel Dorigny (Paris and Oxford, 2003), p. 231.

Art Lover No. 9: Chakaia Booker

Art Lover No. 9 of NMWA’s “25 Art Lovers” campaign, sculptor Chakaia Booker, is both a patron of the museum and featured artist in the collection. Her abstract tire creations have recently been installed in conjunction with the New York Avenue Sculpture Project, the only public art space featuring changing installations of contemporary works by women artists.

Join “Art Lover” Chakaia Booker and share one of your favorite works of art in NMWA’s collection or your experience visiting the New York Avenue Sculpture Project. What are your thoughts on public art? How do Chakaia Booker’s sculptures transform its surroundings? How do her sculptures differ from other public art in the DC-area? Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences. We are all ears!

Royalists to Romantics: Spotlight on Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun

In Royalists to Romantics: Women Artists from the Louvre, Versailles, and Other French National Collections, 77 works by 35 artists display the talents of French Revolution-era women artists. Their paintings are windows into their careers and the singular challenges of their time. The catalogue that NMWA has published to illustrate Royalists to Romantics includes essays as well as individual artist biographies that give insight into the lives of women artists working in France between 1750 and 1848. This excerpt explores the life of one the show’s featured artists, Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun. For additional information, visit www.nmwa.org, or purchase the catalogue from the Museum Shop by calling 877-226-5294.

Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun (1755-1842), Portrait of a Young Girl, 1775. Oil on canvas. Musée des beaux-arts, Caen

Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun was one of the most celebrated painters of pre-Revolutionary Paris and is today the best-known female artist of her generation.¹ Her first instructor was her father, Louis Vigée (1715 – 1767), who specialized in pastel portraits and taught in the Académie de Saint-Luc. Famously precocious, she had established her own studio by 1770 — the year she turned fifteen — and joined the Académie de Saint-Luc in 1774, sending works in both pastels and oils to the organization’s exhibition that year.

A 1776 marriage to the painter and prominent art dealer Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun (1748 – 1813) yielded both opportunities and complications. Through her husband, Vigée-LeBrun enjoyed access to important art collections in France and abroad; her painting style particularly reflects exposure to such seventeenth-century Flemish masters as Anthony Van Dyck and Peter Paul Rubens. That she had married into the art market would be held against her, however, when she sought membership in the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1783: academicians were prohibited from engaging in commerce. In the end, the support of Queen Marie-Antoinette trumped such concerns. Vigée-LeBrun was admitted to the Académie on May 31, 1783, the same day as Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, who is also included in this exhibition.

Elisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun, Self-Portrait, 1790. Oil on canvas. 39 x 32 inches (99 x 81 cm). Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy

Vigée-LeBrun first painted Marie-Antoinette in 1778, the same year that she produced the portrait of the landscape painter and academician Joseph Vernet (1714 – 1789) on view in the present exhibition. Images of the queen regularly featured among the portraits and allegorical paintings that Vigée-LeBrun sent to the Louvre Salons of the 1780s. A staunch monarchist, Vigée-LeBrun wisely fled France with her daughter, Julie, shortly after the outbreak of Revolutionary violence in 1789. Her husband remained in France and divorced her in absentia in 1794, gaining control of her sizable assets.

For the next sixteen years Vigée-LeBrun would tour the courts of Europe. Feted in Florence, Rome, Naples, Vienna, Saint Petersburg, London, and other cities throughout the Continent, she returned to France in 1805 having painted a vast number of stunning portraits of the international aristocracy. Her travels constitute some of the most compelling moments in her unreliable but charming Souvenirs, first published between 1835 and 1837 and reprinted in many editions and translations since her death in 1842.

Note

1. Vigée-LeBrun has received more scholarly attention than any other artist included in this exhibition. For three very different approaches, see Joseph Baillio, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, 1755 – 1842, exh. cat. (Fort Worth, 1982); Gita May, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun: The Odyssey of an Artist in an Age of Revolution (New Haven, 2005); and Mary D. Sheriff, The Exceptional Woman: Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art (Chicago, 1996).

Calling All Art Lovers

If you ask art lovers, they will tell you that their relationship with a work of art reaches beyond the frame:

“The painting makes me stand tall, which in turn makes me feel strong. For me, this painting is about power and grace.”

That is how art lover and DC chef, Carla Hall described Snake Man by Alison Saar (1994) when asked to participate in NMWA’s “25 Art Lovers” campaign.

The “25 Art Lovers” campaign is in conjunction with NMWA’s 25^th anniversary and features local residents, patrons of the arts and Washington, DC area leaders. The campaign exhibits the breadth and depth of NMWA’s collection and its impact on patrons in the metropolitan DC area. The first 10 of 25 individuals profiled are popping up on the DC Metro, in print, and online, sharing one of their favorite art works from the collection and encouraging others to do the same. Patrons featured include:

Leah Bassett: makeup artist, painter
Chakaia Booker: sculptor in the collection of NMWA; currently has her work on the New York Avenue Sculpture Project
Warren Brown: owner of CakeLove; entrepreneur
Carla Hall: Chef (contestant on several seasons of Top Chef), TV Host (ABC’s The Chew)
Bonnie McElveen-Hunter: Founder/CEO of Pace Communications, Diplomat, Humanitarian
Gina Lewis: Systems Engineer
Heather & Tony Podesta: Art Collectors, Lobbyists
Andrea Roane: TV News Anchor (WUSA 9)
Trevor Young: Visual artist

Join the “25 Art Lovers” and share one of your favorite works of art in NMWA’s collection. Why does that particular artwork move you?  How long have you been visiting NMWA? Do you have a story about how a work of art has inspired you? Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences. We are all ears!

Women’s History Month—and NMWA—after 25 Years

Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Woman's Party, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Every month is spent celebrating women’s history at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, but this year’s annual celebration takes on special importance. This March marks the 25th anniversary of Women’s History Month and coincides with NMWA’s own 25th anniversary celebration. It is no coincidence that these two landmark occasions were conceived in the same year. By 1987, the debate over women’s rights had reached a critical level of acceptance. The establishment of NMWA and Women’s History Month responded to the political conversations of the day, reflecting the widespread desire to recognize women in history and culture.

Barbara Bush and Wilhelmina Cole Holladay at the 1987 NMWA opening.

In 1978, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women sought to remedy the lack of public consciousness surrounding women’s history. They established the week of March 8 as the first annual “Women’s History Week.” The celebration was met by enthusiasm and by 1979, the seeds for a national decree were planted.

In February 1980, the groups of women working toward national recognition realized their dream with President Jimmy Carter’s Presidential Proclamation declaring the week of March 8, 1980 as National Women’s History Week:

“From the first settlers who came to our shores, from the first American Indian families who befriended them, men and women have worked together to build this nation. Too often the women were unsung and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed. But the achievements, leadership, courage, strength and love of the women who built America was as vital as that of the men whose names we know so well.”

The movement gradually gained momentum and by 1986, 14 states had dedicated March to Women’s History Month, prompting the 1987 congressional decision to establish the celebration in perpetuity.

Installation of Chakaia Booker's sculpture in the New York Avenue Sculpture Project.

This year’s theme, “Women’s Education—Women’s Empowerment,” is near to NMWA’s cause and heart. NMWA’s 25th anniversary exhibition, Royalists to Romantics: Women Artists from the Louvre, Versailles, and Other French National Collections, explores the role of women’s education in great depth. The female artists featured were not granted the same arts education as their male counterparts. They were barred from studying the nude figure, which inhibited them from taking on history painting, then considered the highest genre. The exhibition explores the alternative avenues women in the 18th and 19th centuries travelled while refining their artistic skills and building audiences for their work.

Take part in Women’s History Month this March with a visit to the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Royalists to Romantics: Women Artists from the Louvre, Versailles, and Other French National Collections is on view through July 29, 2012. Also join us on March 8, widely celebrated as International Women’s Day, 10 a.m.–3 p.m. for the New York Avenue Sculpture Project Dedication and March 9 for the opening of R(ad)ical Love: Sister Mary Corita on view through July 15, 2012. For more information, visit www.nmwa.org. To learn more about Women’s History Month, visit www.nwhp.org.

—Chelsea Beroza is the publications and communications intern at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Women in the Spotlight at the 84th Annual Academy Awards

Women dominated the cinema in 2011 with the wickedly hilarious Bridesmaids and the emotionally triumphant The Help. This year’s Oscar nominations reflect the groundbreaking contributions of women to contemporary film.

Comedy lovers rejoiced with the announcement of this year’s Academy Award nominees, which departed from the academy’s bias toward dramatic, tearjerker flicks. This year, Bridesmaids—which stands apart for its rare, all-female ensemble and use of slapstick comedy—joins the chuckle-worthy Midnight in Paris and The Artist in obtaining major nominations.

Contemporary comics are challenging the traditional perception of women in comedy. As the late Christopher Hitchens articulated in his 2007 Vanity Fair article “Why Women Aren’t Funny,” there is a common view that women’s nature is somehow incompatible with humor. However, with the emergence of talented comedians like Tina Fey (who has answered these critics with characteristic wit), Wanda Sykes, and Sarah Silverman, this stereotype is evolving.

Bridesmaids, an outlandish and exuberant portrayal of a group of women attempting to carry out their wedding-party duties, has landed two Oscar nominations, including best original screenplay by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo and best supporting actress for Melissa McCarthy.

Following the announcement of her Oscar nomination, Kristen Wiig called fellow female comedian Ellen DeGeneres during a taping of The Ellen DeGeneres Show. After pleading for a sequel (and asking for a part), DeGeneres offered heartfelt praise: “It is so great to see movies like that, that I believe in. There are a lot of movies out there and when something is smart and funny and it makes you laugh that hard—we need movies like that right now.”

Another female ensemble, The Help, was nominated for four Academy Awards this year: best picture, best actress, and two nominations for best supporting actress. These include nominations for Viola Davis, being considered for a best actress award, and costar Octavia Spencer, for best supporting actress. A win by either actress would make Oscar history, because African American actresses have so rarely been honored at the Academy Awards. In 1940, Hattie McDaniel became the first black actress to win an Academy Award for her performance in Gone with the Wind, but it took 50 years for another black actress (Whoopi Goldberg in 1990, for Ghost) to grace the stage for an acceptance speech.

Since then, few actresses of color have been nominated and even fewer have won the coveted Oscar statuette. This year’s ceremony has the potential to add to the short list of black female award winners, in spite of controversy over the story’s treatment of racial tensions.

Based on Kathryn Stockett’s novel by the same name, The Help takes place in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, as a young white woman, Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, returns home from college to pursue journalism. Her first assignment prompts her to learn more about the lives of the black maids working for white families in her community; she ultimately writes a book exposing the racism that they face.

The Help has provoked a conversation about racism yesterday and today. Ida E. Jones, national director of the Association of Black Women Historians, issued an An Open Statement to the Fans of The Help, urging viewers to read more widely about the civil rights movement and understand its historical context. The uplifting, simplified story shows that more nuanced roles for black actresses are sorely needed. Despite this, there is no denying that both Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer delivered stellar, Oscar-worthy performances.

Find out who takes home an Academy Award by tuning in to ABC on Sunday, February 26, 7 p.m. EST.

Film fans should also look for programs at NMWA this spring—a series of films inspired by the French paintings on view in Royalists to Romantics begins on March 4 with Dangerous Liaisons, and an environmental film festival March 19–20 will feature exciting recent films. For more information, visit www.nmwa.org.

—Chelsea Beroza is the publications and communications intern at the National Museum of Women in the Arts