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NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS
More than thirty years ago, Wilhelmina Cole Holladay and her husband, Wallace, having seen interesting and relatively unknown pieces in several European museums, began collecting works by women artists. In Vienna, they became acquainted with the work of Flemish still-life painter Clara Peeters and were pleased to see her also represented in the Prado in Madrid. Upon their return to the United States, they were amazed to discover that the premier art history text book, H. W Janson's History of Art, contained no mention of Peeters or of any other female artist.
The Holladays' dismay motivated them to accumulate a fine collection of art by women. After a number of years, the Holladays began to think about a depository for their collection. Nancy Hanks, then chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, suggested that rather than donate it to an institution that would be unwilling to highlight women artists, the Holladays should found a museum specifically dedicated toward that end.
The couple banded together with a number of other men and women who saw the need for such an institution, and in 1981, the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) was incorporated. What followed was a veritable firestorm of controversy about the need for such an institution and the possibility that a separate museum would "ghettoize" women artists, debasing them all rather than lifting them...