More Women Artists for Art Museums' Permanent Collections

Hanna Hirsch-Pauli, Sweden, 1864-1940, "Breakfast." 


I want to savour the art of women and so I'm cutting and pasting some of the great art posted by Christa Zaat's Female Artists in History, Rita H.Sjoholm's Celebration of Female Artists, and other wonderful online sites. 

  Women artists have long been in the shadows of men, their work shunned, negatively critiqued and belittled, prevented from wide public view.  At one time women were not allowed to study anatomy.  Nonetheless, women artists persisted, since time immemorial. The process of unearthing and showcasing their work, begun in earnest in the 1970s, continues to this day, with fabulous results. Their work is every bit as fine and accomplished as any of their contemporary male artists. Women artists are being studied, their biographies written, their work publicized. Galleries are showing and selling their work, and Auction houses are finding them to be among their best sellers. It's a sea change. Art museums are starting, slowly but surely, to add women artists from all eras and places, in all mediums, to their permanent collections.  

It's about time. 

Plautilla Nelli, The  Last Supper, c.1568. I love this.

It's like the sound of one hand clapping. If you don't hear it, does it exist?  And the art of Plautilla Nelli in the 16th century? If you don't see it, does it exist?  Uncovering, recovering and discovering women's art is critical, and enriches the human esperience. That's why I was happy to learn about another project that does just that. It's called AWARE.  https://www.artfixdaily.com/news_feed/2020/02/23/8993-aware-archives-of-women-artists-research-and-exhibitions-to-debut?   "AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions, a Paris-based nonprofit with a mission to reposition women artists in the canon of 20th century art history. It will make its US debut in partnership with The Armory Show next month in New York. The partnership will culminate in the award of a juried prize, The AWARE Prize at The Armory Show to a solo presentation of work by a woman artist." (The Armory Show is open to the public from March 5-8, 2020, at Piers 90 and 94, New York City).
How I wish I could make it to NYC, but it's too close to my Peace Corps project in Immokolee. But I will send this link to my museum, the Toledo Museum of Art. Meanwhile, below are a few more women artists whose oeuvre the museums, including TMA, might consider purchasing.

Hannah Hirsch-Pauli, Morning, in a similar style to
"Breakfast" above

Hannah Hirsch-Pauli, Sweden. #hannapaulihirsch #frukostdags

Art History has been written by men for centuries. Until the beginning of the 20th century, women hardly appeared at famous exhibitions with their paintings. The Swedish Hannah Pauli (her name is spelled in different ways) is one of the exceptions: her painting "Breakfast" was presented at the Paris World exhibition in 1889, and at the 1894 world exhibition in Chicago.She went to Paris after the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts. Impressionists inspired her use of colorful lights and shadows. Her contemporary Swedish artists dismissed her art as "too dramatic;" they were shocked by the vivid brush work, the colorful shadow spots taken without a crossing. Some joked that the  painter might have used the breakfast table earlier to clean her brush. However, time confirmed the artist's talent, and this creation became one of the most popular paintings in the Swedish National Museum.

Elaine de Kooning was a prolific and versatile painter, writer and teacher.  Though she was closely associated with the  New York School and Abstract Expressionism, de Kooning eschewed developing a singular style and instead painted in a range of modes from realism to abstraction. “Style is something I’ve always tried to avoid. I’m more interested in character,” she said. The subjects in her work also varied, including mythology, landscapes and portraiture. One of her later bodies of work was inspired by the cave paintings in Lascaux. She studied widely with different artists including Milton Resnick and Willem de Kooning, whom she married in 1943. Wikipedia.

Barbara Regina Dietzsch, German, Gooseberry bough with butterfly, dragonfly, 1706-1783 . Born in September 1706 in the so-called Free Imperial City of Nuremberg, she came from a family of artists. Her father Johann Israel, brother Johann Christoph, and sister Margareta were artists employed by the City courts. An interesting tidbit. Dietzsch taught Margareta how to paint. Dietzsch married painter Nikolaus Matthes and moved to Hamburg. She eventually returned to Nuremberg, where she died in May 1783. Dietzsch specialized in watercolor and gouache paintings of animals and plants which she also turned into engravings. Her works sold in Germany, England, Holland, and France. She is being rediscovered. Wikipedia

Teresa Rowzskowska, Alley in Naples

Teresa Rowzskowska, born 1904 in Poland, lived through the tumultuous war years, working with the artistic underground. She was a painter, theatre stage designer & filmmaker. She devoted her final years to painting. She was murdered in her home in 1992, a sad end to a difficult life. This painting, Alley in Naples, Italy, represents a peaceful time in her life. WikiPoland

Helen Kiner McCarthy, Autumn Glow

Helen Kiner McCarthy, Poppies 

Helen Kiner McCarthy, American, 1884-1927. McCarthy was born in small town Ohio and was a founder of the Philadephia 10, a group of women artists who worked and showed together. Its first exhibit was at the Art Club of Philadelphia in 1917. She began her studies at the Philadelphia School of Design in 1904, studying under Elliott Dangerfield and Henry B. Snell.  After graduation she shared a Philadelphia studio with  Mary-Russell Ferrell Colton for several years and then Edith Lucile Howard.  From 1910 through 1926 McCarthy exhibited widely, which makes me wonder why we don't see more of her art in museums. She was a member of several art groups that focused on promoting women's art, including the Plastic Club and the National Association of Women Artists and its predecessor the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. She was also a member of the International Society of Arts and Letters and the New York Society of Painters. Wikipedia

Anita Clara Ree, 1885, was a painter of the German Avant-garde during the Weimar Republic. 

Anita Clara Ree was born into an old Jewish family of Hamburg merchants. She was the daughter of Israel Rée and Clara Hahn.  According to Wikipedia article, Anita and her sister Emilie were baptized and raised as Lutherans, in accordance with the social norms of assimilated upper middle class and upper class Jewish families in Germany at the time. I never knew this and need to check it out. In 1905, she studied with the Hamburg painter Arthur Siebelist. In 1906, she met Max Liebermann, who recognized her talent and encouraged her to continue her artistic career. During the winter of 1912–1913, she studied with Fernand Léger in Paris. From around 1914, Anita Rée gained recognition as a portrait painter. She took her own life in 1933, partly as a result of having been subjected to hostility from various groups and harassment by antisemitic forces, partly due to disappointments on the personal level. In a note to her sister, she decried the insanity of the world. In 1937, the Nazis designated Rée's work as "degenerate art" and began purging it, as well as the work of many other artists, from museum collections. Wilhelm Werner, a groundskeeper at the Kunsthalle Hamburg preserved several of Rée's paintings by hiding them in his apartment.  Anita Clara Ree, Female Artists in History, and Wikipedia

Bertha Boynton Lum, American, 1869-1954.

Bertha Boynton Lum, "Wind and Water." Lum studied woodblock printmaking in Japan  and China and popularized it in America. Her prints are lovely. Lots of information online. 

Mary-Russell Ferrell COlton, Arizona, 1889-1971

 Colton, Hopi dwelling. 

Mary-Russell Ferrell Colton, Indian girl

A founder of the Museum of Northern Arizona.
This is a biography. Glad to know about this.

I've been discovering more about the Philadelphia 10 women artists group that Helen Kiner McCarthy was a member of. Another Philadephia 10 artist was Mary-Russell Colton, 1889-1971, born in Louisville, KY, moved to Arizona, and became a true Arizona artist who reminds me of Georgia O'Keefe. She should be recognized right up there with her. Colton was a founder of the Museum of Northern Arizona, as well as an advocate of Native American rights. She devoted her life to promoting their art and culture. I love these Southwest scenes.

Mary -Russell Ferrell Colton

* https://www.artfixdaily.com/news_feed/2020/02/23/8993-aware-archives-of-women-artists-research-and-exhibitions-to-debut?

* https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/kunsthalle-schirn-surrealist-women-1779669?fbclid=IwAR3r8QNvUTFccOz6nqI7JBT_oOpex6bnQB78H0SUY3Un4AuD4Urm2twX00g

"Female artists’ contributions to the Surrealist movement may be well known, but only a handful have received the recognition they deserve. A scholarly new exhibition in Frankfurt has brought together works by 34 important artists, several of whom have been long overlooked and excluded from the male-dominated art historical canon.

The quantity and diversity of their work shows how a female perspective was central to Surrealism from its birth in the aftermath of World War I. Included in “Fantastic Women. Surreal Worlds from Meret Oppenheim to Frida Kahlo” at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt in Germany are a staggering 260 paintings, works on paper, sculptures, photographs, and films, some rarely seen before.

On show are works by lesser known artists, such as the Toyen, Bridget Tichnor, Alice Rahon, Kay Sage, and Ithell Colquhoun, alongside their more famous contemporaries, Frida Kahlo, Meret Oppenheim, Lee Miller, Claude Cahun, Leonora Carrington, Dora Maar, and Dorothea Tanning. Highlights include a screening of pioneer French filmmaker Germaine Dulac’s The Seashell and the Clergyman. Made in 1927, it is considered to be the first Surrealist work in the history of film.

“To this day, the names and works of the huge number of important women artists throughout the world are missing in many reference guides and survey exhibitions on Surrealism,” writes the exhibition’s curator, Ingrid Pfeiffer, in the publication that accompanies the show. “The reasons for this are many, including the endless repetition of an outdated canon in spite of recent research—a problem which pertains to art history in general.”

Many of the artists are connected through their association with Surrealist co-founder André Breton, or through their participation or contributions to key group exhibitions, and publications. The exhibition also explores the network of friendships of these female pioneers that stretched from Europe, to the US, and Mexico."

Our National Parks in Danger

Dismantling our democracy means dismantling everything we hold dear. That includes our environment, our national parks and monuments.  Nothing is sacred. The only thing that matters under Forever Impeached's crime enterprise is corporate profits and billionaires' greed.  

Our national parks,  our national treasures. 

Our National Parks and monuments encompass the glorious natural beauty of our country, from sea to shining sea.  Ken Burns in his documentary calls them "America's Best Idea."  Pioneer naturalist John Muir called them "our national cathedrals," counterpoints to the built environment and monuments of old Europe.  

America's natural environment is part of our history and cultural heritage.  It is threatened by the tRUmp administration and the oligarchs who run it. They are running our country into the ground. 

Zion National Park, which I visited with
my brother Loren. Incredible beauty.

Under a rogue president, Impeached Forever, who doesn't know our history and doesn't care, everything we love and value is being dismantled, including our national parks and monuments.   

"Under this administration, nothing is sacred as we watch the nation’s crown jewels being recut for the rings of robber barons," wrote Jonathan B. Jarvis, former director of the National Parks Service (NPS) and his brother Destry Jarvis, a long time Parks advocate for various nonprofits. (Jarvis and Jarvis, "Our National Parks are being Dismantled," The Guardian, January 10, 2020.)

The professional management of our national parks has been respected under both Democratic and Republican administrations for over 100 years, note the Jarvis brothers. Sure, they've had different priorities, "the Democrats often expanding the system and the Republicans historically focused on building facilities in the parks for expanding visitation." But the career public servants of the National Park Service (NPS), charged with stewarding America’s most important places, such as the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and the Statue of Liberty, were left to do their jobs. They protected the parks and our natural heritage.

At the Grand Canyon, cold but awestruck
by its vastness, ancient geology, layered beauty.

This  has changed. Drastically. The change began almost immediately after Donald Trump's inauguration, when he whined about crowd size.  Remember that? He asked the Park service to change their estimates? 

This was not only among the first of the daily lies he has told since them, some 16,000+ of them, but it was probably when NPS wound up on the wrong list. 

The new Interior Secretary Ryan ZInke went after the Parks, doubling entrance fees, rescinding climate policies, moving career park superintenants around to force them into retirement, firing or replacing scientists. Nasty. 

The Sierra Club bemoaned Zinke's total disregard for the environment, concluding that his tenure at Interior "proved to be nothing more than a shill for corporate polluters."  

Zinke didn't last long, resigning under a cloud of criminality, ethics violations, and scandal, but his successor is just as bad. David Bernhardt, a former oil and gas lobbyist who was Zinke’s second-in-command, sees our pubic lands as treasures for oil and gas companies to drill, mine and exploit.  

And so, the Jarvises note sadly, we have "a systematic dismantling of a beloved institution, like pulling blocks from a Jenga tower, until it collapses."

The dismantling continues.   "It is clear that this administration cannot be trusted with the keys to the vault of our most precious places that define us as a nation, such as Mount Rushmore or Yosemite national park."  

Now we learn that the Interior department has just finalized plans to permit drilling, mining and grazing in Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments in southern Utah. It still shocks, the irreverance. This comes as the Bureau of Land Management is eyeing much bigger changes in how it manages 245 million acres of public land across the country and the minerals buried underneath them.  

Think of it. Some 245 million acres of public land once protected for the enjoyment of all Americans are now in danger for the profit of a few.  How can we allow our natural heritage to be so violated, so defiled?  

The Jarvis brothers make an interesting suggestion for the future. "When this nightmare ends, and we begin to rebuild, Congress should consider making the NPS an independent institution, more akin to the Smithsonian, and no longer subject to the vicissitudes of a hostile political agenda in a Department of the Interior dominated by extractive industries and anti-public land crusaders."  

We can work hard for a Blue tsunami in November 2020 that will take out the tyranical regime whose main goal is dismantling everything that truly makes America great. Saving our environment, our national parks and public lands, will be at the top of the agenda.

Some sources:

1.  Jonathan B. Jarvis and Destry Jarvis, The Guardian, January 10,2020,  https://news.yahoo.com/great-dismantling-americas-national-parks-110036985.html.

2.  http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/, Ken Burns, "Our National Parks: America's Best Idea."

3.https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-zinke-departs-20181215-story.html. 

4.  https://www.sierraclub.org/lay-of-the-land/2018/02/ryan-zinke-s-rocky-scandal-ridden-year-interior

5. The dismantling continues. https://www.rawstory.com/2020/01/trumps-epa-is-about-to-give-a-big-gift-to-the-coal-industry/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3625

6, https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/02/06/trump-administration-will-allow-drilling-logging-sensitive-federal-lands-utah/ 

7.  https://www.courthousenews.com/white-house-finalizes-plans-to-shrink-utah-national-monuments/

8.  https://www.npr.org/2020/02/06/803467297/trump-administration-finalizes-plans-to-allow-development-on-downsized-monuments?

The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument boasts stunning features such as the Escalante Canyons, seen here in an undated photo. Together with Bears Ears, the Trump administration has greenlit big changes for the monument — though the legality of the move remains unclear. Jerry Sintz/AP

Adam Schiff's Closing Defense of Rule of Law at tRUmp's Impeachment Trial

Adam Schiff's closing argument at the totally rigged Senate Impeachment trial of tRUmp. A powerful speech for the ages and for history. 

“Saying Donald Trump has "betrayed our national security" and will do so again, Rep. Adam Schiff used his closing arguments in the president's impeachment trial on Monday [Feb 3, 2020] to urge the Senate to take a stand against "a man without character.” 

"We must say enough — enough! He has betrayed our national security, and he will do so again," Schiff, D-Calif., told the Senate. "He has compromised our elections, and he will do so again. You will not change him. You cannot constrain him. He is who he is. Truth matters little to him. What's right matters even less, and decency matters not at all.” "You are decent," he added. "He is not who you are.” 

Schiff, the lead House manager in the trial, said Trump has clearly abused his power and would continue to do so unless the Senate stands up to him. "Can we be confident that he will not continue to try to cheat in [this] very election? Can we be confident that Americans and not foreign powers will get to decide, and that the president will shun any further foreign interference in our Democratic affairs?" Schiff asked. "The short, plain, sad, incontestable answer is no, you can't. You can't trust this president to do the right thing. Not for one minute, not for one election, not for the sake of our country. You just can't. He will not change and you know it.” 

"What are the odds if left in office that he will continue trying to cheat? I will tell you: 100 percent," he said. "A man without character or ethical compass will never find his way.” Schiff acknowledged the House managers were unlikely to hit the high bar needed to convict the president, a supermajority of 67 senators. 


Republicans currently hold the majority with 53 members. Schiff urged them to be among "the Davids who took on Goliath.” "Every single vote, even a single vote by a single member can change the course of history. It is said that a single man or woman of courage makes a majority. Is there one among you who will say ‘enough!’?" Schiff asked. 

Another of the House managers, Rep. Jason Crow, warned that if the Senate didn't remove Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, it would "render him above the law.” "Impeachment is an extraordinary remedy," said Crow, D-Colo., but "it is in the Constitution for a reason.”  Raw Story, Feb. 6, 2020

House Managers, New Yorker, Illustration, Christina Couceiro; photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty photo

 House manager Val Demings, D-Fla., said another reason the Senate needs to take action is because the president has been "unapologetic and unrestrained," and will only be more so if the Senate closes his eyes to his misconduct. "President Trump's constitutional crimes, his crimes against the American people and the nation, remain in progress," Demings said. 

She was right on. Vile, vicious tRUmp got rid of  a real hero, Lt. Col Vindman, his twin brother, and Sondlund that Friday, in a Friday Night Massacre, and more witness retaliation on the agenda of this crazy idiot w/o morals, w/o decency. Attacking Romney viciously at a National Prayer breakfast, for god's sake, and later that day with his sycophants rising and applauding him. Outrageous. That was as sickening as anything else, as he continued to attack with glee those on his "Enemies List," which is long and terrifying. The helplessness of our govt in the face of this monster is beyond enraging. 

Postscript:
So Rs did as expected & voted to acquit on Wed. 5 February, 2020, a day that will live in infamy, and tRUmp gloated in his disgusting ways the day after, his evil soul exposed again and again and again.

Only Sen Romney had the guts to listen to his conscience and vote with the Ds to remove this vile Forever Impeached from office. Utah is thanking him. So are the majority of Americans.  One Republican Senator will moral courage.  Just one.

After listening to magnificent remarks from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi the next day, I posted: Impeached Forever is toast, exposing his evil core, his vile vindictiveness, his vicious ignorance and lies, every damn day. Blasting "faith" at a Prayer Breakfast, for god's sake, to attack Romney.  Pelosi has spoken the truth. SOTU was full of blatant falsehoods, a manifesto of untruth. I share her outrage. McConnell and all Rs who voted to acquit have blood on their hands.They will pay for their crimes. https://www.rawstory.com/2020/02/trumps-bitter-backlash-against-mitt-romney-has-exposed-the-ugly-core-of-his-cult-columnist/?fbclid=IwAR2NKNTj-

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christopherm51/ukraine-us-arms-sales?fbclid=IwAR38sej2LOF-sydz_5oOkso4eEkGla2IeNBfKSmxUqz3ZdC7UQiiV9fqha4
Christopher Miller article on still withholding $30 million from Ukraine.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/democrats-investigate-profoundly-alarming-ukraine-texts-n1116666

https://twitter.com/AdamParkhomenko/status/1224907023990562816? good video ad on the tRUmp tyranny

Good story on the Prosecution effort, by Robert Baird, New Yorker, Feb 20, 2020. https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/the-prosecution-of-president-donald-trump?l-

Impeached Forever, Forever Damned

The House managers, led by the brilliant Adam Schiff, presented a powerful, informative, fact-laden case for removing Impeached tRUmp from the office he has abused and defiled.  It was so powerful, the evidence so compelling, that the Republicans' brazen vote against witnesses and documents, when 72% of Americans wanted witnesses like a real trial, has imploded the GOP. The  forthcoming acquittal will seal its doom. 

Schiff was eloquent, impassioned. He turned again and again to the principles on which America is founded, and urged Republicans to defend those principles. 

They did not. They did not defend our Constitution, they trampled on it, outright traitors to Rule of Law. We have before us, in essence, a massive cover up. All Republicans are in the loop. This cover up will unravel.

"We are totally coordinating with tRUmp.
Everything is coordinated with the White
House...He will never be removed."

The rigged trial is just the beginning. A rigged trial ends up with a rigged acquittal. It won't hold up for long.  

For a short-term 'win', McConnell and his Republican accomplices, who flamingly denied the truth and betrayed their Oaths. are heading to major long-term losses.  The cult base they've appealed to is dwindling. Principled Republicans are leaving the GOP in disgust. The American people know right from wrong. They know a rigged trial when they see one. It's the beginning of the end for Senate Republicans. History will swallow them up.

For me, the way tRUmp & his cabal got rid of Ambassador
Yovanovich represents the extent& depth of the abuse of power.

While these Republican traitors are campaigning for re-election, more evidence will continue to pour out bit by bit, up to November. We've already  learned, during the trial itself for heaven's sake, that tRUmp's lawyer Pat Cippoline is a fact-witness to the Ukraine scandal, an unbelievable shocking conflict that should end the trial. Can Schiff move for a mistrial? asks attorney and MSNBC legal commentator Glenn Kirschner. Another hypothetical dangles before us.

Meanwhile, we will hear more from Bolton. His statements are damning and his forthcoming book will be explosive. Lev Parnas and his indefatiguable lawyer Joe Bondy will put out their extensive evidence, which will be easily corroborated. "Everyone was in the loop." That includes Pence, Barr, Pompeo, the whole damn Cabinet and many agency heads like Mulvaney. Now there's a bunch of emails that have leaked out, damning emails that reflect communications between and among tRUmp and his immediate advisors about decision-making regarding the scope, duration and purpose of the hold on military assistance to Ukraine. Wait until those see the light of day!   

Add Pompeo, Rs like Nunes, a criminal
cabinet , & tRump's
impeachment attorney Pat Cippoloni.
among most other Republicans.

  So are McConnell &Republican enablers,
complicit in crimes against democracy &
a cover up the likes of which we've
never seen..

Payback is coming. A Blue Tsunami is expected in November to vote out these criminal Republicans. The "acquittal" of  the Forever Impeached by a jury rigged by Mitch McConnell, "the gravedigger of our democracy," will insure that we the people, the ultimate jury, will vote for the ultimate verdict: guilty as charged. 

Some sources:
*  https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?

*  Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post, Jan 24,2020
"There is actually an obvious and possibly accurate defense that no Republican senator dare advance. It goes like this: "The president has never understood that there is a difference between his political/personal interests and national security. Trump has a narcissistic personality so he cannot intentionally betray the country for his own benefit because he thinks they are one and the same. He is also highly ignorant and malleable, so he will believe any illogical conspiracy theory that Russian President Vladimir Putin advances and/or that serves his interests. No matter how many times he was told that Ukraine did not interfere with our election, or that aid to Ukraine was in the United States’ interest, or that he could not stop aid in violation of law, he could not mentally process such information. He believed that advisers who told him such things were weak or out to get him. In other words, Trump is so mentally and emotionally defective, he cannot understand the import of his actions or concepts such as right vs. wrong, true vs. false and personal vs. national interests. As for obstruction, his lawyer told him to refuse to give up anything, so he simply took that advice."


*  https://news.yahoo.com/trump-administration-wont-release-emails-205608561.html "The
Trump administration is blocking two dozen documents containing emails on President Donald Trump's involvement in the decision to withhold military aid to Ukraine, the government said in court filings./Justice Department and Office of Management and Budget attorneys acknowledged in the late Friday night filings the existence of emails explaining the president's thinking about withholding about $400 million in Ukraine aid. Hours earlier, the Senate voted largely along party lines to not call witnesses in the impeachment trial...Specifically, the documents ... are emails that reflect communications by either the President, the Vice President, or the President’s immediate advisors regarding Presidential decision-making about the scope, duration, and purpose of the hold on military assistance to Ukraine," said Heather Walsh, deputy general counsel for the Office of Management and Budget."

*  Glenn Kirshner, attorney and MSNBC legal commentator, has a great suggestion: “Cipollone perpetrated a unimaginable fraud on the Senate and the American people and the Dems should not go quietly into that dark acquittal. Move for a mistrial and see what the Chief Justice says.”