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Kristen Swinth, Painting Professionals: Women Artists And The Development Of Modern American Art, 1870-1930, Andrea Pappas

Art and Art History

The author, Kirsten Swinth, examines this important and complex problem from a variety of perspectives. The book relates two intertwined, mutually illuminating narratives: one, that of the explosion of women artists into the mainstream after the Civil War, and two, the radically changed politics of art and culture under early twentieth-century modernism. Telling these two stories side by side reveals in part the gendered roots of modernism and sheds light on the impact of gender politics--in part a result of such large numbers of women artists--on major art-world systems of access and reward, such as academy exhibitions, gallery practices (many …