Bold Women

Bold Women is an expansive exhibition that presents the visionary—and still too often unsung—work of women artists. The show emphasizes the essential contributions of artists from diverse backgrounds, especially women of color, LGBTQ+ artists, and artists of intersecting identities.

With works in many mediums, the exhibition explores the myriad ways that women have pushed the boundaries of art and spurred critical social and cultural changes across generations and geographies. The artists create change in part by using innovative materials, bold concepts, and vital experimentation that have also altered the development of modern and contemporary art. At the heart of the exhibition is the idea of boldness, presented as a defining attribute of the featured works and an indicator of the artists’ fearless efforts to alter institutional systems, dispute dominant historical narratives, and envision and enact equity and access.

The exhibition takes place in four galleries, three on this floor and a fourth upstairs, each featuring one theme:

• Portrayal / Resistance: ways that portrayals can deny visibility
• Collective Preservation / Liberation: women preserving, healing, and liberating communities across generations
• Nature / Erasure: the erasure of women’s contributions, in conversation with nature
• Wisdom / Knowledge-keeping: transmitting knowledge and women as connectors

Together, these groupings present an understanding of women’s efforts to challenge history, decipher the present, and build the future. In our current moment, their voices urgently need to be heard.

Bold Women was organized by Curator Susan Earle and co-developed with advisors Kimberli Gant and Wanda Nanibush, and assisted by advisors Marla A. Jackson and Rose Bryant, and with KU students Lena Mose-Vargas, Sarah Dyer, Sara Johnson, and Maggie Vaughn.

This exhibition and related programs are supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the R.C. Kemper, Jr. Charitable Trust & Foundation, the Art Dealers Association of America Foundation, Every Page Foundation, a 2024 KU Racial Equity Research, Scholarship & Creative Activity Award from the KU Office of Research, Jeff and Mary Weinberg, and Elizabeth Schultz. Additional support comes from the Spencer Museum International Artist-in-Residence program, the Linda Inman Bailey Exhibitions Fund, KU Student Senate, and Friends of the Art Museum.