The Women Who Elevated American Art

For centuries, women artists have overcome the challenges of creating work, often becoming famous and respected in their own time, only to have the forces of misogyny bury their achievements in the bowels of history. German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1880) held the arts in high regard, as long as they were created by men. He stated, “Women have proved incapable of a single truly great, genuine and original achievement in art, or indeed of creating anything at all of lasting value.” Shocking as this may sound, there are still influential people in the seats of power today who hold similar views, making the exhibition Shattered Glass: The Women Who Elevated American Art, at The Canton Museum of Art through March 1, 2026, more relevant today than ever. 

The artists represented in the exhibition were born between the early 19th to mid-20th century, a period that started when women were banned from higher education and ended with American art historian Linda Nochlin’s 1971 essay, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Nochlin’s essay provides a focus for the mid-20th century feminist movement in the arts.

Some of the Canton’s featured works have reached iconic status, like the 1936 photograph Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange (1895-1965). Other living artists like Judy Chicago (b.1936), whose dramatic installation The Dinner Party sparked controversy in 1978, remain outspoken voices for women’s recognition in the arts. Sojourner Truth Test Plate #2 from The Dinner Party is now being shown. 

Ceramics, like textiles and stitchery, have begun to be recognized as fine art rather than marginalized as craft. Finnish-American Maija Grotell (1899-1973), considered “The Mother of American Ceramics”, helped to spearhead that shift. She even became the head of the ceramics program at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. One example of her pioneering glazes, called Grotell blue, adorns a ceramic pot in the exhibition.  

Seeing great work by Cindy Sherman (b. 1954), Elaine de Kooning (1918-1989), Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), Alice Neel (1900-1984), Audrey Flack (1931-2024), and others is always riveting, but this show reveals so much more. An effort was made to include women who were disenfranchised because of their race and socio-economic status, as well as their gender. Apsáalooke (Crow)/Irish, Montana-born multimedia artist Wendy Red Star (b.1981) is represented by Four Seasons (2006), a series of inkjet prints. She employs razor-sharp humor to dissect the absurd myth of the idealized “Indian” in American culture. 

Painter Caroline Augusta Lord (1860-1927) was among several Ohio-based artists that were discoveries for this reviewer. She studied in Paris and at the Art Students League in NYC. The show includes two paintings depicting women’s labor from her three-part 1911 series, titled Acme Laundry, that combine social realism with a Renaissance approach to composition. 

The Canton Museum was also able to draw from their extensive collection of watercolor and work on paper by women artists including Pop artist Idelle Weber (1932-2020) and muralist Ethel Magafan (1916-1993), who worked under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal during the Depression.

Harlem Renaissance sculptor Selma Burke (1900-1995) was primarily known for her portraits of famous African American figures, like Duke Ellington. Her small, stylized, modernist bronze titled Peace, created during the Vietnam era, is included along with next generation African American female artists like Kara Walker (b.1969) and Delita Martin (b.1972), both of whom employ a variety of techniques to explore the complexities of African American history and female identity.      

There have been powerful feminist art movements in the past, and the recent spate of institutions exhibiting “rediscoveries” of the women behind those movements will hopefully prove to permanently shatter the glass ceiling, as the title of this Canton Museum exhibition suggests.