Making the Unknown Known: Women in Early Texas Art, 1860-1960s

 

    The annual meeting of CASETA, the Center for the Advancement and Study of Early Texas Art, featured on June 21 in Houston a special book signing for the new publication Making the Unknown Known: Women in Early Texas Art, 1860s-1960s edited by Victoria Hennessey Cummins and me.

    A group of talented contributing chapter authors produced the essays in this book. It places women artists from past eras of the state’s history into the larger social and cultural contexts in which they lived. In so doing, it evaluates the contributions made by women artists to defining the nature of the wider experience of Texas history. In Making the Unknown Known, contributors explore the significant role women artists played in developing early Texas art from the nineteenth century through the latter part of the twentieth century. The biographies presented in the book allow readers to compare these women’s experiences across time as they negotiated the gendered expectations about artists in society at large and the Texas art community itself. 

    Surveying the contributions women made to the visual arts in the Lone Star state, Making the Unknown Known analyzes women’s artistic work with respect to geographic and historical connections. Including surveys of the work of artists such as Louise Wüste, Emma Richardson Cherry, Eleanor Onderdonk, Grace Spaulding John, and others, it offers a groundbreaking assessment of the role women artists have played in interpreting the meaning, history, heritage, and unique character of Texas. It contains an analysis of their varied styles of art, the media they employed, and the subject matter contained in their art. It thus evaluates the contributions made by women artists to defining the nature of the wider Texas experience as an American region.

Click Here for the Texas A&M University Press