Surprise in Delaware!

This summer has been filled with adventure and art. As it should be.

Just a few things about summer adventures relating to women in the arts.

I had the opportunity to cap off the summer with a trip to the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington, DE. We were in town for a college friend's wedding. The museum was delightful. It had a lot of work of illustrators from the 1900s; the collection was centered around turn of the century illustrator Howard Pyle.

But what was particularly impressive was the presence of female artists throughout the museum. Almost every gallery had at least one piece by a woman. While yes, this does not mean the distribution was 50/50 but I can recall only one other time that I noticed the inclusion of women artists that wasn't a specific show for women. For instance, in the Pre-Raphaelite section, there was a painting of Dante's Beatrice by Marie Spartali Stillman. Another gallery of illustrators had a wonderful piece of two girls and a squirrel by Katherine Richardson Wireman. The abstract/contemporary art gallery had a work about Eleanore of Aquitaine by Grace Hartigan. It was pretty awesome. They did have a gallery dedicated to contemporary local female artists, which was cool. But here was a museum that had tried to be more inclusive of female artists. There's room for improvement but it's a step in the right direction.

To leave you all with another nugget, here's an article by the Guardian about non-English female writers are translated less than their male compatriots.

That's all for now.