The New Woman: Recent Acquisitions

On view through Fall 2021

On the occasion of a recent gift of works by William J. Glackens and his circle by the Sansom Foundation, NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale presents The New Woman. The title refers to the phrase which came to be used in the late 19^th century, to characterize the newly present women of the middle and upper class who were beginning to participate in urban life. At the same moment in time, Modernism was taking shape in both art and society, and women were beginning to stake a position in both realms. Glackens and his wife, artist Edith Dimock, were very much engaged in this evolution of the role of women, and actively participated in the Women’s Suffrage movement. Their representation of female figures was shaped by the vantage of their social consciousness. This exhibition depicts women on both ends of the societal spectrum during the Gilded Age of America, and it is between these two spheres of the domestic and the bohemian, that the New Woman of the twentieth century would take form. The New Woman is curated by NSU Art Museum Bryant-Taylor Curator Ariella Wolens.

Image: Arthur Bowen Davies, A Night in Spring, n.d. Courtesy of the GAJ ARTRUST#2