Please join MA-NMWA, and our sister committees in the UK and France, for an exciting virtual event on

Wednesday, 3 May 2023 

12:00 Eastern Daylight Time
17:00 British Summer Time
18:00 Central European ABCDSummer Time
Although this event is free of charge, advance registration is required. Details about the event will then be sent to registered attendees.

International guests: please use this email to register: [email protected]
Marie-Gabrielle Capet, The Atelier of Madame Vincent, 1808. Oil on canvas, 27 x 33 in.
Paris Spies-Gans and Martina Droth will discuss Spies-Gans' important first book, A Revolution on Canvas: The Rise of Women Artists in Britain and France, 1760-1830.
Just as the National Museum of Women in the Arts founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay sought to challenge the assumption that there have been "no great women artists" by collecting and publically exhibiting many indisputably "great" works of artist women, so too has Paris Spies-Gans investigated the same assumption, through evidence-based analysis. Her body of work includes site and time-specific research that reveals how women have found ways to achieve critical and commercial success despite the obstacles they have faced. 

Both women - Wilhelmina, the collector, and Paris, the scholar- intend their work not as end-points but as part of ongoing discussion and learning.
Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Peace Bringing Back Abundance, 1780. Oil on canvas, 40 3/8 × 52 1/8 in.
Tracing the activity of more than 1,300 women who exhibited more than 7,000 works of art across genres in London’s and Paris’s premier exhibition venues throughout the Revolutionary era, the book demonstrates that women artists professionalized in significant numbers a century earlier than scholars have previously thought.

Paris Spies-Gans' scholarship and resultant discoveries complement the mission of the National Museum of Women in the Arts and its committees, three of which are presenting this event; Martina Droth, as interlocutor, will use her expertise to contextualize the material in A Revolution on Canvas: The Rise of Women Artists in Britain and France, 1760-1830. We hope you can join us for what promises to be a fascinating discussion.
Maria Cosway, The Duchess of Devonshire as Cynthia from Spenser's Faerie Queene, 1781-1782. Oil on canvas.
Pauline Knip de Courcelles, Lyre-Bird, 1812. Watercolor
Paris Spies-Gans is a historian and historian of art with a focus on women, gender, and the politics of artistic expression. She holds a PhD and MA in History from Princeton University, an MA in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art, and an AB in History and Literature from Harvard University. 

In her work, Paris prioritizes the study of women artists and their writings, paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, and more. Her projects illuminate how women have navigated sociopolitical barriers to participate in their societies through diverse forms of intellectual and creative expression, even with the obstacles they regularly faced — and especially at moments of political revolution and change.

Her first book, A Revolution on Canvas: The Rise of Women Artists in Britain and France, 1760-1830, was published by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in Association with Yale University Press in June 2022. It was named one of the top art books of 2022 by The Art Newspaper and The Conversation, and received the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies’ Louis A. Gottschalk Prize, Honorable Mention, for an outstanding historical or critical study on the eighteenth century. She is currently working on her second book, A New Story of Art (Doubleday/US and Viking/UK). 
Martina Droth is Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Yale Center for British Art, where she oversees collections, exhibitions, and publications. Her curatorial work and research focus on sculpture and British art. She was the Chair of the Association of Research Institutes in Art History from 2016 to 2022.

Current and recent curatorial projects include: Bill Brandt | Henry Moore (Hepworth, Sainsbury Center, and YCBA, 2020—2023); Things of Beauty Growing: British Studio Pottery (YCBA and Fitzwilliam Museum, 2017—2018); and Sculpture Victorious: Art in an Age of Invention, 1837-1901 (YCBA and Tate Britain, 2014—2015).
Prior to joining the Center, she was at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK, where her exhibitions included Taking Shape: Finding Sculpture in the Decorative Arts (HMI and John Paul Getty Museum, 2008—2009) and Bronze: The Power of Life and Death (HMI, 2005). Her forthcoming projects include an exhibition on Hew Locke. 
“It blows apart the clichéd but hard-to-shift notions of women artists as few in number, pursuing careers that blurred the lines between professional and amateur […] An important contribution to the field.” — Tabitha Barber, The Art Newspaper

“The book is not only engrossing and stuffed with ravishing images, but also offers a truly pioneering rebuttal to ‘revisionist’ art history by claiming that, in this case, no revision is needed: women artists were already great.” — Eliza Goodpasture, The Conversation



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The Massachusetts State Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts is supported in part by funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Cultural Sector Recovery Grant, and the Boston Cultural Council's Reopen Creative Boston Fund, administered by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture.
MA State Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts
c/o Demetriades
229 West Canton Street #1
Boston, MA 02116