An exhibit highlighting late 19th-century Rhode Island women painters, illustrators, authors, and sculptors and their contribution to modern American culture will open at the University of  Massachusetts Dartmouth on April 12.

Making Her Mark focuses on a group of women artists who were instrumental in the establishment of one of the first American art clubs — The Providence Art Club — to accept women as equal members, active board members, and artistic colleagues. Over the course of the later half of nineteenth century women artists, including Providence Art Club artists Rosa Peckham, Emily McGary Selinger, Helen Watson Phelps, Emma Swan, Charlotte Gilman, Mary C. Wheeler, and Sophia Pitman worked, traveled, and exhibited alongside their male contemporaries. Many of these women exhibited their artworks in salons and galleries in both the United States and abroad—including Paris and London. This exhibition celebrates these women artists and their contribution to American history.

The exhibit is part of the UMass Dartmouth art history capstone experience, one in which students work in teams and apply their academic and professional knowledge to a real world experience. This is the sixth year that Dr. Anna Dempsey and Allison J. Cywin have directed a group of upperclass students to execute a professional museum quality exhibition and publication. This student-run exhibition explores modern American visual culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with a specific focus on feminine artistic communities in Providence.

The exhibition runs from April 12 to April 29 at the Main Campus Art Gallery located in the College of Visual & Performing Arts building. Parking is available in lot 7.

We invite the public to attend the opening reception and gallery talk on Wednesday, April 12, 4-6 p.m. The public exhibition hours are Monday- Saturday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. For more information, contact Dr. Anna Dempsey at adempsey@umassd.edu or Allison J. Cywin at acywin@umassd.edu, or call the gallery at (508) 999-8550.