Art beyond the Smithsonian: unique galleries and museums thrive in D.C

Art Business News, July, 2005 by Barbara Murray

NMAI may have been a long time coming, but the same can be said of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), as the facility is billed as the only art museum in the entire world dedicated solely to women artists, despite the fact that women constitute just over half of the population. And the irony does not end there. The nearly 79,000-square-foot building, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was originally a Masonic Temple whose entry was restricted to men only. Located on New York Ave., about five blocks from the White House, NMWA has been a big draw to both genders.

"We're attracting even more men because of the quality of the shows," says Barbara Kram, NMWA director of communications and marketing, pointing to the recently closed Berthe Morisot exhibit of Impressionist works as an example. "The artists are women, but it doesn't affect the quality of art." One of the permanent collection's most popular pieces among all visitors is eminent Mexican painter Freida Kahlo's, "Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky," an oil on masonite piece completed in 1937. While a great many of the museum's works are of the contemporary genre, the collection does include pieces from all periods, beginning with the 14th Century Renaissance to today.

"We have works from Renaissance painters who were important in their day, but didn't get the same attention because of their gender," says Kram. As a matter of fact, NMWA founder Wilhelmina Cole Holladay and her husband, Wallace F. Holladay, began amassing a collection of art back in the 1960s and soon after, were smack by the absence of reference to women artists in museums and notable art exhibitions in international and domestic arenas. The realization led to Holladay's official establishment of NMWA in 1981.

Today, the museum is in a class all its own and has expanded its offerings beyond the visual. "We have a theater and a prominent literary arts series," Kram says. "It's really all about women in the arts."

A First: The Phillips Collection

Discreetly situated on the outskirts of lively Dupont Circle, The Phillips Collection bills itself as "America's first museum of modern art." Having opened its doors in 1921, the expansive gallery--which is currently undergoing construction to increase the size of its exhibition space by 12,000 square feet and add an educational center--has a dedicated following in the district. And while it may not have the national recognition of, say, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, it does possess a 2,500-item collection that would rival that of any leading modern art facility in any major metropolitan market in the United States--but on a smaller scale, perhaps. The Phillips' permanent collection features a bevy of prominent works from a distinguished list of artists. Among them, Renoir's "Luncheon of the Boating Party"; El Greco's "The Repentant St. Peter"; Cezanne's "Self Portrait"; Degas' "Dancers at the Barre"; and an expansive anthology of paintings by Jacob Lawrence.