Ginny Treanor's exhibition, Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600-1750, opens at the National Museum of Women in the Arts

Years, in the making, this important and beautiful exhibition expands our understanding of the history of art in the lowlands during the long seventeenth century

Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600-1750, an exhibition that just opened at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, is a beautiful and intelligent exhibition that promises to revise academic (and public) understanding of just who participated in artistic production in the Low Countries (Netherlands and Flanders) during the long seventeenth century (1600-1750).

Conceived by Virginia "Ginny" Treanor, senior curator at NMWA and a graduate of the doctoral program in the Department, this exhibition features around 140 works by over 40 artists. Some of the artists are better known, such as Rachel Ruysch (she and her work are the subject of large solo exhibition at the Boston MFA at present), Judith Leyster, and Clara Peeters, while other artists only recently have resurfaced, due in part to the tireless research of Katie Altizer Takata, another alumna of the department and specialist in this area.

Collaborating with Frederika van Dam, her co-curator from the Museum of Fine Art in Ghent, where the show will travel next, Ginny Treanor has mounted a show that explores the history, milieu, and varied constraints in which women artists worked through four themes: Presence/Identity, Choices, Networks, and Legacy. The show has received favorable reviews in, among other publications, the New York Times. 

Congratulations Ginny and Katie!