Sounding Her Fame: Dutch Women Artists of the Seventeenth Century

In anticipation of a major exhibition on Dutch and Flemish women artists, scheduled to be held in 2025 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C., this webinar will provide an engaging look at the many fascinating issues surrounding this topic. Who were these woman artists, and what were their family and social backgrounds? Where did they train and how were they received by the broader artistic community? What distinguished a professional from someone who pursued creative outlets in her life? Aside from painting, etching, and drawing, what other creative/artistic avenues, such as lacemaking and embroidery, did women pursue?

To guide us through these and other issues we are delighted that this webinar will include the following discussants: Virginia (Ginny) Treanor, Associate Curator, National Museum of Women in the Arts; Katie Altizer, Ph.D. candidate in 17th century Dutch and Flemish art at the University of Maryland; Frima Fox Hofrichter, Professor at Pratt Institute; and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Senior Advisor to The Leiden Collection.

Speakers

Virginia (Ginny) Treanor, Associate Curator, National Museum of Women in the Arts, received her M.A. from American University and her Ph.D. in seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish art from the University of Maryland. Committed to scholarship that both elucidates and contextualizes the contributions of women throughout history, she has curated exhibitions on seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth-century art. Ginny serves on the editorial board for Lund Humphries’ Illuminating Women Artists book series.

Katie Altizer, Ph.D. is a candidate in 17th century Dutch and Flemish art at the University of Maryland. She is currently completing her dissertation on the relationship between politics, nobility, and science in the game paintings of Jan Weenix (1640-1719). Prior to coming to Maryland, Katie attended the University of Edinburgh where she received a degree in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. She has also worked at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and at the University of Oxford Museum of the History of Science.

Frima Fox Hofrichter, Professor at Pratt Institute, specializes in seventeenth-century Northern Art, issues of gender, class, and women artists of the Early Modern Period. Best known for her monograph, and related scholarship on Judith Leyster, she is the author of Gender and Art in the 17th Century for Oxford Online Bibliographies, co-editor of Woman, Aging, and Art: A Crosscultural Anthology, and, since 2000, a co-author of the standard introduction to art history, Janson’s History of Art.

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Senior Advisor to The Leiden Collection, was formerly curator of Northern Baroque painting at the National Gallery of Art, and Professor of Art History at the University of Maryland. He has lectured and published extensively, and has organized over fifty exhibitions, including Johannes Vermeer (1995), Rembrandt’s Late Religious Portraits (2005), Jan Lievens (2008), and Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting (2017). In 1982 the Dutch government named him Knight Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau, and in 2006 the Belgian government named him Commander in The Order of Leopold I.