Her Voice: Works from The Cheekwood Collection
Nearly 100 years ago, on August 24, 1920, Tennessee was the final state, the 36th state, needed to ratify the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote in America. To celebrate the 100th anniversary, we are partnering with Lipscomb University to celebrate the strength of the women that came before by presenting the exhibition, Her Voice: Selections from The Cheekwood Collection.
In the decades following the campaign for women’s suffrage, a greater number of women successfully pursued careers as professional artists and designers. Her Voice: Selections from The Cheekwood Collection highlights our long-standing legacy of collecting works by female artists. This exhibition serves to recognize the voices, narratives, and creative innovations of extraordinary women. Strong female voices, including Mrs. Wood, Mabel Cheek and Huldah Cheek Sharpe, guided Cheekwood, and Florence Drake, the maid, and Johnnie Woodbridge Winstead, the cook, were among some of the female staff on the estate. The women of Cheekwood were bold, beautiful women, unafraid to claim their place in history. This tradition of honoring female voices continued into the collecting tendencies of the institution.
Her Voice: Works from The Cheekwood Collection challenges the dominant history of 20th century American art by focusing on the overlooked and underrepresented work and stories of women artists. This exhibition advocates for inclusion and gender equity in museums, the art world, and beyond. The works in this exhibition will offer an opportunity for the Lipscomb University community to consider how institutions like Cheekwood can help remedy gender gaps in the Western canon of art history and consider the legacy of risk takers who refused to be written out of the narrative. This exhibition includes work by Ida Rittenberg Kohlmeyer, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jane Peterson, Liliane Lijn and more.
Her Voice: Works from The Cheekwood Collection will be on view from January 27 – March 30 in the Hutcheson Gallery of the Beaman Library at Lipscomb University. The exhibition is free and open to the public.
Perle Fine, Pure Myth. c. 1948. Oil on canvas. Gift of the Berezov Family. 1994.21. (above)
Ida Rittenberg Kohlmeyer, Symbols 81-5. 1981. Charcoal, pastel and oil on canvas. Gift of the Exchange Club Charities. (right)
