MMoArt

March is Women’s History Month, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts uses this time to celebrate women artists with work in museums, galleries, and other organizations. Mobile Museum of Art is using the last five days of March to talk about #5WomenArtists who have artwork hanging in our galleries. If you missed any of our posts, we’ve got you covered.

First up is Susan Plum. You may have seen this sculptural piece in our collection exhibition Serious Whimsy, Serious Play, but did you know Susan’s work is also featured in our special exhibition, HOUSTON ARTISTS: Gestural and Geometric Abstraction? In the HOUSTON ARTISTS exhibition, you can see another sculpture piece of hers and her abstract work.

Next up is Bernice Sims! This folk artist grew up near Brewton, Alabama and played an integral part in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, including participating in the Selma-Montgomery March and witnessing “Bloody Sunday.” She started painting in the 1980s and continued until her death in 2014. Her work is currently hanging in our collection exhibition, Our People, Our Places, Our Collection.

Alabama native Kathryn Tucker Windham was a photographer, but she also was the first woman journalist for the Alabama Journal, a loyal friend to Harper Lee, and a writer who penned a series of books about a ghost named Jeffrey with whom she shared her Selma home. You can see this piece in our collection exhibition, Our People, Our Places, Our Collection.

Arielle Masson grew up in Brussels, Belgium and studied fine art there. In her work, she utilizes a geometric matrix called “Vesica Piscis” (translated to The Vessel of the Fish), which is the overlapping of two circles to create an almond shape in between. See this piece and more in our special exhibition HOUSTON ARTISTS: Gestural and Geometric Abstraction.

The last artist is Anne Goldthwaite. Goldthwaite was born in Montgomery, Alabama, but she went to New York to study art after her fiancé was killed in a duel and later traveled to Paris, where she befriended Getrude Stein, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso. She was also an advocate of equal rights and women’s rights, including a stint where she served as the president of the New York Society of Women Artists. Despite her worldly travels, Goldthwaite always considered Alabama her home and much of her work features the rural life of the South. Her piece, “Heading Home,” is in our collection exhibition, Our People, Our Places, Our Collection.