Permanent Women

Maybe the permanent collections are the way to go - to avoid the crowds that seem to accumulate at special exhibitions. Found out on What's On City that the first Sunday of each month is a freebie at the National Museum of Women in the Arts and I just couldn't pass it up.

I met my son at the Museum; we stopped at Caribou Coffee for a bite and at Macy's to visit a winter coat that he's had his eye on. Unlike the Museum's, the coat's price wasn't right, so we moved on back to our intended destination.

A show of Mary Cassatt was finished and Isabel Bishop hadn't started yet so that left the permanent collection. Almost privately. What a way to look at art. The rooms were so quiet that we found ourselves whispering.

The permanent collection is arranged chronologically. Years back the question was asked where are there not more women artists? I have a different question: In the face of such obstacles, how were there any at all?

Fortunately for us, we get to see what those earlier heroes created. Now, while there may still be barriers, more and more artists are women and we get to see their stuff too.

The colors of Alma Woodsey Thomas' Iris, Tulips, Jonquils and Crocuses and Orion and the textures of Emily Kngwarreye's Yam Story went right through me to grab at my insides. I found two pieces of art, Louise Nevelson's Reflections of a Waterfall II and Pat Steir's Waterfall of a Misty Dawn, facing the same way on walls in adjacent rooms, juxtaposing the artists' responses to and depictions of the same stimulus in their appearance and materials.

How powerful the urge to create is and was in the early and more recent artists! How lucky are we to get to see what this urge has produced - and in the hush of the permanent collection on a grey and rainy Sunday afternoon.