WOMEN ARTISTS

The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art was founded by women. Mrs. E. A. Neely and Bessie Vance Brooks, separately, spearheaded the efforts that culminated in the opening of the Brooks Memorial Art Gallery in 1916. Florence McIntyre, an artist who studied under William Merritt Chase, was the museum’s first director. She mounted five exhibitions organized by the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, including two annual shows in 1917 and 1919. Thus began a long history of leadership and support by women that includes the five founders of Art Today (1954-2002, acquired 56 contemporary artworks), and the Brooks Museum League (f. 1934, funded 212 acquisitions).

The first two works to enter the Brooks’s collection were portraits of the Brooks by Cecilia Beaux, who had encouraged Mrs. Brooks to support the founding of an art museum in Memphis, and agreed to serve on its first acquisitions committee. Beaux, an internationally regarded artist at that time, was the first woman professor of art at the prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Despite the importance of women in founding and leading the institution, and in exhibiting the work of women artists, collecting their work for the permanent collection did not become a high priority until the late 20th century. Nonetheless, the collection spans works in a variety of media including: Sofonisba Anguissola’s (1532/35-1625) Self Portrait; Chakaia Booker’s (b.1953) Untitled sculpture; Martha Rosler’s (b. 1943) feminist video Semiotics of the Kitchen; as well as the significant commission of Marisol’s (1930-2016) The Family (1969).