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Susan Watkins and Women Artists of the Progressive Era
On View
October 17, 2025 — January 11, 2026
Location
Special Exhibition Gallery
Susan Watkins and Women Artists of the Progressive Era examines how women at the turn of the twentieth century overcame barriers and achieved success within the professional art world. Centered on the career of Susan Watkins (1875–1913), the exhibition offers a look into the environment in which Watkins and other female artists of the time forged their professional identities.
Watkins reached the height of her profession, regularly exhibiting at the Paris Salon and earning accolades from the American art press before her career was tragically cut short by her early death at the age of thirty-eight. Her paintings of interiors and portraits incorporated a range of influences from academicism and aestheticism, while at the same time revealing a deep understanding of the interplay between figures and their environment. Though Watkins’s career was steeped in the values of her time, her work reveals a distinctly personal vision.
Histories of this period have often overlooked the contributions of women like Watkins who embraced more traditional artistic styles. Featuring 75 works, including paintings, drawings, and sculptures by Watkins and artists such as Lilla Cabot Perry, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, Elizabeth Nourse, Anna Elizabeth Klumpke, and Mary Fairchild MacMonnies, this exhibition recovers their stories and reasserts their contributions to art history.
This exhibition is organized by the Chrysler Museum of Art and was supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Scheduled U.S. tour dates for Susan Watkins and Women Artists of the Progressive Era are as follows: Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, TN (July 13, 2025 – September 28, 2025); Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA (October 17, 2025 – January 11, 2026)
The exhibition will be complemented by a companion publication co-published by the Chrysler Museum of Art and Yale University Press with support from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. The illustrated catalogue explores Watkins’s work and the opportunities for women artists with contributions from leading scholars.
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