Around the 1920s in Harlem, New York, a new movement celebrating African American art and culture thrived. The “New Negro Movement,” as it was called at the time, gathered together artists, poets, authors, and intellectuals, and had a lasting effect on the development of African American culture. This literary and social movement became known as […]
Anita Berber: The Naked Dancer of Weimar Berlin
Anita Berber was a pioneering and controversial dancer from Germany. She had an eventful life, finding success on stage and screen (not to mention in her love life) during the Great War before ultimately meeting her end too soon. A Stormy Background It is something of a convention, when talking about a notorious celebrity of […]
Harriet Powers: A Sermon in Patchwork
Harriet Powers was a creative African-American quilting genius! She used her quilts to re-tell familiar Bible stories in a unique and fascinating way.
Gertrude Bell, Al Khatun: Queen of the Desert
British-born Gertrude Bell, also referred to as the female Lawrence of Arabia, was an adventurer, spy, archaeologist and powerful political force who travelled into the uncharted Arabian desert and was recruited by British Military Intelligence to help reshape the Middle East after World War I. She drew the borders of Iraq, helped install its first […]
Fay Kellogg, ambitious architect
Fay Kellogg (1871–1918) was an American architect and suffragette who helped to open the field of architecture to women who followed. She was described in her own time as “the foremost woman architect in the United States”, and known for staying on the job site “until the last brick is laid and the last nail […]
Esther Howland, the Mother of the American Valentine
Artist Esther Howland (1828–1904) was the first to publish and sell Valentine cards in the United States. Before Esther, many Valentine cards were hand made with paper, lace, and ribbons and handwritten poetry. By the end of the 19th century, most Valentines were mass-produced by machine, many based off Esther’s designs. Esther was inspired by […]
Rose-Adélaïde Ducreux, French painter, composer, and musician
Though the art world of the 18th century was dominated by men, quite a few women were trained as artists and held their own in exhibits and sales. One of these women was Rose-Adélaïde Ducreux, whose portrait of herself tuning her harp is a gorgeous and historically fascinating work of art. Rose was born in […]
Suzanne Valadon, self-taught artist of Bohemian Paris
Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938) was a successful, self-trained artist of Montmartre in Paris. She began her career modelling for such artists as Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir, and was close friends with Degas and the composer Erik Satie (who proposed to her immediately — but she turned him down). Watching how the artists painted her, she taught herself […]
Edmonia Lewis, African-American & Native American sculptor of international fame
Edmonia Lewis was the first African American artist to earn international fame for her artwork. She earned a living as a sculptor and portraitist and was famous for several of her works, including a bust of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw of which she sold over 100 plaster copies. Born Mary Edmonia Lewis in 1844 in […]
Alice Austen, photographer
Alice Austen (March 17, 1866 – June 9, 1952) was a self-taught photographer born on Staten Island. She used her mother’s surname, Austen, because her father had left her mother before Alice was born. Alice started her interest in photography when her uncle gave her a camera when she was 10 years old. After she […]
