Your First Look at PMA's Mary Cassatt Exhibit

Pennsylvania’s Mary Cassatt captivates art lovers with a new exhibit.

Cassatt’s “Maternal Caress,” 1896

For most of history, women have been seen as objects rather than individuals—and the art world is no different. In the later 19th century, Mary Cassatt’s depictions of women and children challenged this notion with pastels, paintings and prints that showed her subjects engaged in various activities, from caregiving to social settings. Now, for the first time in 25 years, fans of the revered Impressionist can explore a large-scale exhibition of her works at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA, philamuseum.org). Here, co-curator Jennifer Thompson offers a glimpse into Mary Cassatt at Work, open from May 18 to Sept. 8.

Why was it important for PMA to celebrate Mary Cassatt?
For six decades, Cassatt built a groundbreaking career focused on the social, intellectual and working lives of modern women. The PMA wants to introduce Cassatt to new audiences and celebrate her for the important artist she was.

See pieces like “Woman at Her Toilette” firsthand at the exhibit

Which piece in the exhibit do you love the most?
The presentation of “The Bath” group is an example of the work Cassatt put into making prints. Visitors will have an opportunity to see Cassatt’s work unfold across a wall in the exhibition and to appreciate the print’s subject, a woman testing the water temperature of a bath while wrangling a squirming toddler, as attentive to the invisible work performed by women.

How does the exhibit address gender, labor and artistic agency?
The entire exhibition focuses on labor—the artist’s labor and the labor of women in the world around her: nannies, nurses and parents caring for children or women engaging in reading and intellectual work. Cassatt’s scenes of mending and needlework, being a hostess, navigating society or steering a carriage can be seen as different kinds of work, albeit less visible and often overlooked.

“Little Girl in a Blue Armchair” is on loan from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

How was Cassatt advanced for her time?
A rigorous 15-year training period in the U.S., France and Italy taught her how to make pictures well and led to radical experiments in paint, pastel and printmaking in the 1880s and beyond. Her color prints are some of the most innovative and challenging of the entire 19th century.

What impact did Cassatt have on Impressionism?
Cassatt pushed paint and pastel as far as any of her peers, and she took Impressionist printmaking to new places. Her subject matter highlighted the life of modern women inside and outside of the home to a greater degree than any of the other Impressionists.