National Museum of Women in the Arts

05/29/2026

Most people are probably familiar with Jackson Po***ck’s drip paintings, but did you know that Janet Sobel was doing the exact same thing before Po***ck in the 1940s? 👀 Let’s talk about it!  
 
Artwork and photo credits:  
Janet Sobel, Untitled, ca. 1946 
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, “Clement Greenberg,” 1982© 1982 Timothy Greenfield-Sanders 
 
[Video description: Clips of a NMWA staff member speaking in front of an abstract painting in a gallery combined with still images and screenshots of articles.].

05/28/2026

Welcome to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, where the first work you’re greeted with is by Indigenous Australian artist Audrey Morton Kngwarreye! 🌿  
 
In “Alpeyt—Wild Flowers,” Kngwarreye (b. ca. 1952) interprets an acacia plant, called “alpeyt” in the artist’s language group. Its seeds were long used as a food source for Indigenous Australian communities. In the 1970s and 1980s, Kngwarreye participated in batik workshops related to the Land Rights Movement, in which Aboriginal people sought to sustain their culture and reclaim their homelands. Batik is a centuries-old textile art form that uses a wax-resist dyeing technique on fabric. In addition to batik, members of these communities began to make paintings, with women artists quickly becoming a dynamic force in contemporary Australian art. 
 
Artwork credit: Audrey Morton Kngwarreye, “Alpeyt—Wild Flowers,” 1999; © Audrey Morton Kngwarreye 
 
[Video description: Multiple short clips of a painting in NMWA’s Great Hall, depicting multiple versions of the same plant in a Pointillist style.]

05/27/2026

In honor of our 2026 campaign and Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we are highlighting 5 artists in our collection!

1. Book artist and instructor Julie Chen (b. 1963) is known for her innovative use of non-traditional structures and high level of craftsmanship.

2. Deborah Paauwe’s (b. 1972) interest in photography began when she took a series of self-portraits in her youth. By concealing the expressions of her subjects' faces through tight cropping, they blur the line between innocent and sensual.

3. Jiha Moon (b. 1973) is known for her blend of traditional materials and pop culture iconography. She is interested in creating images that can be read differently by people with different backgrounds.

4. Nhat Tran (b. 1962) specializes in urushi lacquer painting, an ancient organic medium that flows from the sap of trees growing only in East Asia: “[it] gives me the sense of communing both with my eastern past and with my adopted western culture.”

5. Yunghi Kim (b. 1962) is a photojournalist who has spent the last 39 years covering conflicts and in-depth, issue-driven stories all over the world. Her career began at The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, MA, where she was the first woman photographer hired in the photography department.

[Image descriptions: Five artworks in different mediums by five different artists in NMWA’s collection.]

05/26/2026

Exclusive NMWA merch just dropped. 😎 
 
Click the link in our bio to shop our newest museum merch and show your support for women artists!  
 
[Video description: Two staff members wearing the same NMWA sweatshirts and holding the same tote bags.]

05/22/2026

Sculptural artist Marisol was born on this day in 1930! 🎂

Born in Paris to wealthy Venezuelan parents, María Sol Escobar (1930 to 2016) preferred to be known simply as Marisol. The artist’s childhood was nomadic, split between Venezuela and New York. Her parents encouraged her early interest in art with frequent trips to European museums. By 1957, Marisol had developed the blocky assemblages for which she is known. Combining wood, painting, and found objects, her sculptural portraits of families and celebrities were celebrated for their wit and empathy.

Read more: https://nmwa.org/art/artists/marisol/

Artwork credit: Marisol, “The Large Family Group,” 1957; © Estate of Marisol/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Photo by Lee Stalsworth

[Image description: A wooden sculpture depicting four adults and one child.]

05/19/2026

In honor of our 2026 campaign and Jewish American Heritage Month, we are highlighting 5 Jewish artists in our collection!

1. Louise Nevelson (1899 to 1988) is considered one of the most important American sculptors of the twentieth century for her pioneering assemblages and monumental public art.

2. Joyce Kozloff (b. 1942) was one of the founders of the Pattern and Decoration movement in the US in the 1970s. Her work draws on maps, illuminations, historical manuscripts, and website imagery.

3. Lotte Jacobi (1896 to 1990) is known mostly as a portrait photographer but was also a leading figure in abstract and documentary photography as well as a contributor to the development of landscape and narrative photography.

4. Abstract artist Louise Fishman (1939 to 2021) purged male influence from her art by embracing traditionally feminine craft techniques through deconstructed paintings that were dyed, cut, and stitched back together.

5. Painter and educator Doris Rosenthal (ca. 1885 to 1971) created unromanticized depictions of everyday life. Her paintings, arranged by themes and motifs rather than region, created links between cultures.

Artwork credits:
1. Louise Nevelson, Untitled, ca. 1930; © Estate of Louise Nevelson/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
2. Joyce Kozloff, “Is It Still High Art?,” 1979; © Joyce Kozloff; Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York
3. Lotte Jacobi, “Head of a Dancer (Niura Norskaya),” ca. 1929 (printed ca. late 1970s); © Lotte Jacobi Collection, University of New Hampshire
4. Louise Fishman, “Two Hearts,” 1981; © Louise Fishman
5. Doris Rosenthal, “Between Two Screens,” ca. 1940; © Doris Rosenthal

05/18/2026

"The exhibition ['Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection'] remains on view through July 26, 2026, anchoring the conversation in something tangible: nearly 80 works by women artists spanning decades of abstraction, material experimentation, and an insistence on taking up space, all from the Shah Garg Collection."

Read more from Komal Shah, founder of Making Their Mark, on BmoreArt:

More than usual, this past year Washington, DC has pulsed with tension; brinksmanship tempered with tiny rays of hope. On February 27, 2026, that tension felt especially charged inside the National Museum of Women in the Arts, where the opening of Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collecti...

05/18/2026

We’re celebrating International Museum Day with a round of “This or That” with NMWA staff! 🖼️ 

Let us know your answers in the comments. ⬇️
 
[Video description: Five NMWA staff members answering questions in different areas of the museum.]

05/15/2026

"Founded by Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, the NMWA was the first institution in the world dedicated solely to championing women artists, and under Sterling’s stewardship, the museum’s collection grew to include over 6,000 works by over 1,500 artists."

Read more on Artforum:

Susan Fisher Sterling, who has been at the Washington, DC museum almost since it opened, has announced plans to retire.