Locating Girlhood: Place and Identity in Early American "Schoolgirl" Art

Featuring spectacular examples of needlework and other ornamental arts made by American girls in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Locating Girlhood: Place and Identity in Early American "Schoolgirl" Art sheds new light on a rich but understudied genre, offering one of the most significant presentations on the subject in recent memory. This major loan exhibition brings together approximately 100 exceptional objects from over 35 museums and private collections nationwide, uniting celebrated masterpieces with remarkable lesser-known gems rarely seen by the public. Unlike many earlier exhibitions, Locating Girlhood explores girlhood artworks from an explicitly art historical perspective, reframing these objects through the lens of place. Though the story of landscape art in the United States has traditionally centered on male academic painters, American girls and young women were laboring over a variety of landscape scenes long before the Hudson River School. From the eighteenth century onwards, representations of landscape were a common visual thread in samplers, needlework pictures, watercolors, and other artworks commonly united under the umbrella term "schoolgirl art," extending from country scenes and cityscapes to maps and other cartographic compositions. By considering these works as deeply resonant expressions of place, the exhibition expands the story of the American landscape and situates women at its heart. Timed to coincide with the US's semiquincentennial, the Locating Girlhood both celebrates the creativity of early American girls and women and critically examines the colonial and early federal ideologies that structured their worldview.