Our Own Work, Our Own Way:
Southern Modern Women Artists
The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg
Through May 18, 2025
The Westmoreland Museum of American Art presents Our Own Work, Our Own Way: Southern Modern Women Artists. This exhibition highlights the significant contributions of women artists whose legacies were shaped by their experiences in the American South. The presentation of this exhibition also marks the launch of The Westmoreland’s Year of Women Artists, a yearlong initiative dedicated to celebrating the significant and often underrepresented contributions of women artists to American art history.
Drawn from the exceptional holdings of The Johnson Collection, Our Own Work, Our Own Way brings together works by over 40 artists, including Anni Albers, Elaine de Kooning, Alma Thomas, and Ida Kohlmeyer, and spans the 1940s to the 2000s. The artists represented in the exhibition transcended the boundaries of their time, creating powerful work that challenged traditional gender roles and broke artistic conventions. While the South was slow to embrace gender equality, many of these artists found a supportive and nurturing environment within creative communities there. Despite the challenges they faced, these women helped define modernism and left their mark on the South’s artistic landscape.
Year of Women Artists at The Westmoreland
Today, women remain vastly underrepresented in the art world, with studies showing that their work makes up only 13% of major American museum collections. The Year of Women Artists at The Westmoreland brings attention to this imbalance through a dynamic roster of exhibitions and events throughout 2025 centered on American women artists from a variety of backgrounds and eras.
In addition to Our Own Work, Our Own Way, the Museum will present A Fountain of Forms: The Rise of the American Woman Sculptor, 1910–1929 (April 11–December 31, 2025), showcasing bronzes by Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, Malvina Hoffman, and Janet Scudder from the collection of Dr. Michael L. Nieland. These sculptors used representations of the female form to assert their individuality and autonomy in an age of increasing patriarchal control.
The Museum also hosts the following: Pennsylvania in Progress (January 18, 2025–November 2, 2025), including photography by Aaronel deRoy Gruber and works by other women artists; Cecilia Beaux: Inventing the Modern Portrait (opening June 14, 2025), which unpacks Beaux’s path-breaking approach to crafting the modern portrait; The Art of Elizabeth Catlett from the Samella Lewis Collection (September 7, 2025–January 4, 2026), celebrating Catlett’s achievements in sculpture and printmaking; and Brynn Hurlstone: Resonance (opening September 7, 2025), a large-scale immersive installation by Hurlstone.
THE WESTMORELAND MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART
221 N Main Street, Greensburg, PA 15601
Our Own Work, Our Own Way: Southern Modern Women Artists
The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania
February 9, 2025 — May 18, 2025
