From a Bay Area showing of Edmonia Lewis’s marble sculptures to Vienna’s major Michaelina Wautier’s exhibition, these exhibitions take a closer look at women artists who made a mark on history.
by Katie WhiteOctober 2, 2025 Share This Article
History’s great women artists have, in recent years, received glimmers of the institutional attention they’ve long deserved. While Hilma af Klint and Artemisia Gentileschi have broken through to the mainstream with major museum exhibitions, still many more influential and daring talents are waiting to be rediscovered by the wider public. Enthusiasm and momentum continue to grow for these stories, thankfully, and this year, a number of museums big and small have turned their attention to their work. Below, we’ve selected just a few of the solo exhibitions highlighting historic women artists worth seeking out this fall.
1. “Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch” at Spelman College, Atlanta
Through December 6, 2025
Born to a Narragansett father and a Black mother, sculptor Nancy Elizabeth Prophet (1890–1960) was the first woman of color to graduate from the acclaimed Rhode Island School of Design. Her career would take her to New York and Paris. Still, throughout her lifetime, the Afro-Indigenous artist navigated an often-hostile art world and struggled, at times, with extreme poverty. She nevertheless continued to produce sculptures of intense poignancy and precise technical skill. “I Will Not Bend an Inch,” co-curated by the RISD Museum and the Brooklyn Museum, now makes its third stop in Atlanta; the exhibition is the first museum presentation of Prophet’s works, many of which have, unfortunately, been lost or destroyed over the decades. Twenty rare works make up the exhibition, including nine portrait heads carved in hardwood, as well as marble carvings, reliefs, and works on paper. These works are a testament to a remarkable and unyielding artistic vision and one deserving of much wider scholarly attention.
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2. “Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within” at Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, WI
Through December 23, 2025
Toshiko Takaezu with works later combined in the “Star Series” (ca. 1994–2001), including (from left to right) Sahu, Nommo, Emme Ya, Unas, and Po Tolo (Dark Companion), 1998. Photo: Tom Grotta, © Family of Toshiko Takaezu, Courtesy browngrotta arts
Interest in American artist Toshiko Takaezu has ignited over the past few years, driven in part by this very exhibition, which originated at the Noguchi Museum in New York last spring. Takaezu, who was born in Hawai‘i of Okinawan heritage, is best known for her glazed “closed form” ceramic sculptures. These forms ranged in scale from the handheld to the monumental; she approached these vessels as her three-dimensional canvases painting onto their surfaces. Takaezu was known for arranging her works to create unique environments. Her practice also incorporated weaving and bronze-cast sculpture, also highlighted in the exhibition. In some ways, this exhibition is a homecoming for Takaezu; the artist taught at UW-Madison from 1954 to 1955.