Born Artis Shreve in North Buxton, Canada, and grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. From an early age, she showed interest in art, and during high school, she painted her classmates’ portraits. After graduation, she got a scholarship to the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, Ontario. After receiving her degree, she married Bill Lane, and the couple moved to Detroit, Michigan. She continued her education at Cranbrook Academy of Art, the first woman to be admitted to the institute, and supported her family by painting portraits. Soon, her reputation as a portrait artist grew, receiving commissions from prominent figures, such as Michigan Governor George Romney, Detroit’s mayor Coleman Young, and members of the Ford family. Upon her divorce, she moved to NYC, NY, and met her second husband, Vince Cannon. After spending some time in Texas and New Mexico, she settled in Los Angeles, CA, working with Universal Studios and becoming the portrait painter of celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, Nancy Kissinger, and President John F. Kennedy. During the 1970s, the civil rights movement influenced Lane’s work, and she began to depict social issues in her art, as can be seen in the painting Tear on the Face of America. With time, Lane’s art expanded to various mediums, such as oil painting, sketching, and collage. It became more figurative and universal, reflecting her vision of metaphysical truth rather than the specific feature of the persons she depicts. Among the portraits and sculptures of notable people she created are Dorothy Height, Mary McLeod Bethune, Aretha Franklin, Oprah Winfrey, and former President Barack Obama. Two of her most known works are a bronze bust of Sojourner Truth in the US Capitol, which upon its unveiling in 2009 by First Lady Michelle Obama, it became the first statue in the Capitol honoring a Black woman. The second is the bust she created of her great, great aunt, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, which stands in Canada since 2009. Read more...

Alma Woodsey Thomas was born in Columbus, Georgia, to an upper-middle-class family. Her family was active in the Black community in town and often hosted art and literary salons. She showed artistic abilities from a young age, creating sculptures and puppets out of clay from the river behind her house. In 1907, racial violence increased in the South, and at 16, Thomas and her family moved to Washington, DC. She attended the segregated Armstrong Technical High School, where she had her first art class. She aspired to become an architect, and since it was an unusual profession for women at the time, she decided to study kindergarten education instead. In 1914, at 23, she began her 36 years career as a teacher. In 1921, at the age of 30, Thomas returned to school as a home economics student at Howard University. Soon after, she switched to fine art in the new art department, becoming the first student to graduate the program and probably the first Black woman in the US to earn a bachelor’s degree in art. At 33, with her new specialization, Thomas began teaching art at Shaw Junior High School, leaving for her retirement 36 years later. She also founded a community arts program for children while attending similar programs for adults. In 1930, she began taking summer courses at Columbia University, earning a Master’s in art education at 43 years old. In this period, her art was influenced by the French School of Painting, focusing on landscapes and still-life painted in an impressionist style. During the 1940s, she was part of The Little Paris Group – a community of Black Washington artists that helped beginner artists improve their techniques. It had inspired her to further her academic education, and for the next ten years, she took night and weekend classes in Art History and Painting at the American University. At the time, her art evolved from figurative painting to abstracts, experimenting with shapes and colors, and she became associated with the Washington Color School – an abstract expressionist art movement. Over the years, Thomas continued painting, but only after she retired from teaching did she become a full-time professional artist. At 69, she began to translate all the theoretical and practical education she acquired over the decades into her own art with a unique point of view. She became known for her colorful paintings of abstracted shapes and patterns, as can be seen in her series of Earth Paintings, in which she painted abstract circles that reference the rows of azaleas and cherry blossoms that grow in Washington DC. In 1966, at the age of 75, Thomas had her first retrospective exhibition at Howard University. She continued to create new work, such as the Space series, inspired by the moon landing in 1969 and displaying it in various venues, such as the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1972 she became the first black woman to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Thomas died at the age of 87 following aortic surgery. Read more...

Maya Ying Lin was born in Athens, Ohio. Both of her parents were scholar artists who fled China in the late 1940s. Her father was a ceramist and dean of the Ohio University College of Fine Arts, and her mother was a poet and a professor of literature at Ohio University. Her creative tendencies were encouraged from a young age, creating art in her father’s ceramics studio and taking bronze casting classes at Ohio University. Lin studied architecture and sculpture at Yale University, earning her Bachelor of Arts in 1981. In her senior year, 21 years old Lin won a public competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the National Mall in Washington, DC. Picked out anonymously of 1,422 submissions, her design was a V-shaped black granite wall inscribed with the names of approximately 58,000 fallen soldiers. One side of the wall is pointing toward the Lincoln Memorial and the other toward the Washington Monument. The minimal design creates a woundlike opening in the earth which symbolizes the pain caused by the war. Contrasting the traditional commemorative designs, the memorial aroused controversy for reflecting a negative attitude towards the war. After defending her design before the US Congress, Lin compromised and added a traditional bronze statue of three soldiers with a flag standing near the memorial. After the dedication on the Veterans Day of 1982, Lin returned to academia, beginning her graduate studies in architecture at Harvard University. In 1986, at the age of 27, she received her master’s degree from Yale and opened a studio in NYC. Two years later, she designed the Civil Rights Movement Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, and the Women’s Table in Yale. In the 1990s, Lin began to work on more artistic installations, focusing on environmental issues and the relationship between people and nature, highlighting the people’s impact on its surroundings. This can be seen in her work Groundswell – a mound of recycled glass and in her series of Wave fields in which she reshaped grass into ocean waves. Water is another recurring motive in Lin’s art, such as Wave Field in which she captured the motion of water, the 2×4 Landscape sculpture that resonant water movement, and her 2006 series Bodies of Water – a representation of The Caspian Sea, The Black Sea, and The Red Sea. In 2000, Lin created a series of seven installations along the Columbia River and Snake River for the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In this work, Lin explored the impact of the expedition on the land and the Native population throughout history. Lin’s environmentalism interest reached its peak in her work What Is Missing. Began in 2009, this multimedia project is an examination and commemoration of the growing threats of biodiversity and natural habitats. Lin is known mainly as a sculptor, though she also worked on various architectural projects that have become recognized for their emphasis on sustainability. Among them are the Langston Hughes Library in Clinton, Tennessee, and the Museum of Chinese in America in NYC. Her creative process has a verbal and literal component. First, she expresses the work verbally to understand its meaning. Then she verbalizes the definition of the site where the work will be presented, trying to understand the piece conceptually and its relationship with nature. Finally, she creates a design model and examines the juxtaposition of the materials and their relationship with the viewers and the surroundings. Read more...

Mary Edmonia Lewis was born free in Albany, New York. Her mother was of Mississauga Ojibwe and African-American descent, and her father was African-American. She grew up in Newark, New Jersey, until her mother died, then she moved near Niagara Falls, New York, to live with her maternal aunts. At the time, she went by her Native American name – Wildfire. Her brother, who had made a fortune in the California gold rush, supported her financially and encouraged her to get a proper education. At the age of 12, Lewis participated in a pre-college program at New-York Central College, McGrawville, and at 15, she attended the secondary Oberlin Academy Preparatory School before entering the Oberlin Collegiate Institute to study art. There, she used the name Mary Edmonia Lewis. After being falsely accused of a series of offenses that include poisoning of two of her classmates, theft, and burglary, she left college before graduation. At the age of 20, Lewis moved to Boston and began her career as a sculptress. She became Edward Augustus Brackett’s student, and in that same year, she had her first solo exhibition in Brackett’s studio. Abolitionists figures and Civil War heroes inspired most of her work at the time. She created a bust of Colonel Robert Shaw, who had died while leading the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, and sold copies of the bust at $15 apiece. She earned enough money that allowed her to move to Europe. In 1866, she traveled to Paris, London, and Florence before settling down in Rome. On her arrival, she met the sculptor Hiram Powers, who gave her workspace in his studio. In Rome, Lewis felt social, artistic, and spiritual freedom, saying that “The land of liberty had no room for a colored sculptor.” She established her studio, sculpturing in marble in a Neoclassical style, exploring classical, religious, and African American themes. Among Lewis’s most famous works is the sculpture “Forever Free” – a depiction of an African-American man and woman emerging from the bonds of slavery. She exhibited and sold her work both in Italy and in the US, and her studio became a tourist destination. The peak of Lewis’s successes was in 1876 when she exhibited a two-ton sculpture titled “The Death of Cleopatra” at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The statue drew thousands of visitors and was declared as the most remarkable piece in the American section. Afterward, she continued to receive commissions, but the demand for her work reduced with the Neoclassical style’s decline. She continued sculpting and displaying her work in small venues, but soon she lost fame and overtime got forgotten by history. In 1901, she died of chronic Bright’s disease at the age of 73 in London. Read more...

Born as Sarah Adeline Johnson in Plymouth, IL, to a family of farmers. She received her education attending rural schools, and after graduation, she began her art training, taking classes at the St. Louis School of Design. She was only 18 years old when she exhibited her artworks at the 1877 St. Louis Exposition, and thanks to the prizes she won, she was able to move to Chicago and make a living from her art. At 23, on her way to her studio, she fell 20 feet into an open elevator shaft. She was severely injured, but the compensation fee she was awarded enabled her the financial freedom to study sculpture and painting in Europe. As a feminist and women’s rights activist, she expressed her political views in her art. Among the many individual busts she sculptured, were busts of the Suffrage Movement’s leaders – Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia Mott, which she presented in the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 (The busts are currently located at the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument Museum). She wanted to put the busts as a group monument at the US Capitol Rotunda but did not get the support at that time. After the 19th Amendment was ratified, she got the funding from the philanthropist Alva Belmont and the commission from the National Woman’s Party. She went to Italy to bring an 8-ton piece of marble to her studio and created her most famous artwork – “Group Portrait Monument to Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony.” The statue was dedicated in a special ceremony on Susan B. Anthony’s birthday, February 15th, 1921, in the US Capitol. This was the pick of Johnson’s career. During the 1930s, her career declined, and she had financial problems. In 1939, 80 years old Johnson invited the press to witness how she destroys her own artworks as a protest against her living conditions as well as against her shattered dream of opening a studio-museum honoring the suffragists and women’s rights organizations. Read more...

Born in Lubbock, TX, studied at Colorado College, and after taking classes at the Art Students League in New York, she moved to New Mexico in 1983. Goodacre is well known for her figurative sculptures, which depict real-life figures, usually in full-size scale and realistic facial expressions. Many of her art and sculptures are set in the open public space, as well as private and museum collections all over the US. One of her most famous works is the 8-foot standing portrait of President Ronald W. Reagan. Through her art, Goodacre often commemorates symbols of women’s worth and independence, such as The Vietnam Women’s Memorial in Washington, DC, and a smaller replica of it is at Vietnam Veterans Memorial State Park in New Mexico. The memorial perpetuates the female contribution during the Vietnam War, and it was the first monument to honor American women. In 2000, the Sacagawea dollar entered circulation in the US, which after a nationwide competition, Goodacre was chosen to design. It portrays the important Native-American woman that helped the new settlers and was later recognized by the suffragists as a symbol of their cause. The design was unveiled at the White House by First Lady Hillary Clinton. Goodacre retired from sculpting in 2016, at the age of 77. Read more...

Born as Wilhelmina (Billie) Cole to a wealthy family in upstate New York, she spent most of her childhood with her grandmother, who lived across the road and inspired her to appreciate aesthetics. She studied art history and business management at Elmira College and took classes or art history in Paris. She had a short career as a social secretary, and following her friends, she took the civil service exam and was drafted during World War II to work for the Air Force Readjustment Division at the Pentagon. Holladay then moved to work for the Chinese Embassy and the wife of Chinese military leader Chiang Kai-shek. After she got married, the couple moved following his work as a successful real-estate developer. While raising their children and being bored since her husband was traveling away for business, Wilhelmina started working at the information desk of the National Gallery of Art. Later the couple began collecting art around the world, and their first artwork was bought at a school function in Arlington, Virginia, for $100. They were advised by a collector friend to find a focus for their collection to stand out, and they found it in Austria when discovering artist Clara Peeters. They were disappointed to find no information on her in the literature of art history, a part of a greater gender-related void. In 1981 they had the biggest collection of female art and art-literature in the world, which they turned into a museum in their own house. After a major fund-raising effort of millions of dollars, they bought a former Masonic Temple near the White House and opened the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) and its library, the first museum putting the spotlight on female artists. At the opening in 1987, Barbara Bush cut the ribbon. The museum was criticized as a “one-woman show” and for separating female artists from the male. Holladay passed away in her home in Washington, DC, when she is 98 years old.   Read more...

Born Chloethiel Blanche Woodard in Illinois, she defied her mother’s wish and went to study Architecture, a passion inspired at the age of 12 while witnessing the construction of her family’s home. She first graduated with high honors from the University of Oregon, and later with a Masters Degree from the Washington University. Her love affair with the capital of the USA started when she came to work for the Federal Housing Administration and later moved to the private sector, growing as managing partner. In 1963, Woodard Smith was the first woman to found and manage her own architectural firm. After five decades of an extensive career, which won her recognition, awards and a seat in influential committees and boards, she retired at the age of 73. Most notable are her ideas of community-building and her contribution to the urban planning of the national capital, which included large scale residential projects, highways, office buildings, and schools. She also provoked criticism when her work on the Southwest Urban Renewal project resulted in removals of low-income black communities. Her work can also be found in the urban fabric of Boston, St. Louis, and Asuncion, capital of Paraguay, where she designed the US embassy. Woodard Smith’s access to major governmental contracts was attributed to her professionalism, her experience working with Federal Housing and her diplomat husband’s position in the White House. Celebrated as the first woman to enjoy a national reputation in mid-century US architecture field, she strongly objected to a gender-related world view. She rejected the Women’s Liberation Movement, dismissed the importance of marches, despised the term “woman architect” and refused to join women’s architectural society. She believed that people are judged by what they know and do, regardless of social categories. She died from cancer just before her 83 birthday, mother of two and grandmother of three. Read more...