Shattered Glass

The Canton Museum of Art recognizes and celebrates the achievements of women artists through a new exhibition.

By Chelsea Koressel

Nov. 25, 2025-Mar. 1, 2026

Canton Museum of Art
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With the intention to honor women artists from the past 250 years, the Canton Museum of Art presents the original and compelling exhibition, Shattered Glass: The Women Who Elevated American Art, which opens in late November. While women artists could have folded under a myriad of adversities and pressures, instead they channeled their energy into important works of art and relied on their passion to see them through. Today, institutions like the Canton Museum help to keep their names and works relevant and in the public eye.

Lilly Martin Spencer (1822-1902), The Dogged Class, 1885. Oil on canvas, 36 x 483⁄16 in. Cincinnati Art Museum, Gift of the Procter & Gamble Company, 2003.108.

“Most Americans have heard of Jackson Pollock, but how many realize it was his wife, Lee Krasner, who introduced him to abstract expressionism?,” asks Christy Davis, the museum’s curator of exhibitions. “How many people would realize artists like Claude Hirst was actually Claudine but started to go by Claude so her work would be treated fairly in juried exhibitions? These stories are important and a part of the American story.”

The exhibition is presented in chronological sections, such as early America through the 1930s; and war and activism from the 1930s and beyond. “The artists in the exhibit represent a cross section of the cultures and experiences of Americans,” Davis adds. “From Colonial English Americans like Eunice Pinney and Native American women like Maria Martinez, to names like Judy Chicago, the Guerilla Girls, Howardena Pindell, Georgia O’Keeffe, Carrie Mae Weems and Wendy Red Star, among others.”

Caroline Augusta Lord (1860 -1927), Acme Laundry in Cincinnati, ca. 1911. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Ohio History Connection.

Eunice Pinney (1770 - 1849), Masonic Mourning Piece for Reverend Ambrose Todd, 1809. Watercolor, pencil and ink on paper, 137⁄8 x 11¾ in. American Folk Art Museum, New York, Museum Purchase, 1981.12.7. American Folk Art Museum / Art Resource, NY.

In addition to featuring cultural diversity, there is a variety of media represented, including watercolors, ceramics, photography, printmaking, painting, video, sculpture and photojournalism.

Dorothea Lange, a photographer and photojournalist, for example, is represented in works like her famous image Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, 1936. “She took a position with the Resettlement Administration where she had the task of documenting the state of the economy across California during the Great Depression,” Davis shares. “It was while she was on assignment that she took the image of Florence Owens Thompson that has become one of the most iconic images of American history. The response to the image caused the United States government to immediately dispatch aid to the migrant farms to mitigate the risk of starvation to those families.”

Elizabeth Nourse (1859 - 1938), Sous les arbres (Under the trees), 1902. Oil on canvas, 277⁄8 x 26 in. Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Anna R. and Frank M. Hall Collection, H-59.1928.

Additional highlights include Caroline Augusta Lord’s Acme Laundry in Cincinnati, circa 1911, showing a documentation of how women entered the workforce to assist in the war efforts on the Homefront; and Elizabeth Nourse’s Sous Les Arbres (Under the Trees), 1902, a scene portraying the mother and child bond the artist was most known for depicting. Also find the work of Selma Burke, whose portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, created in 1944, inspired the design found on the dime; Claude Hirst’s still life An Interesting Book, 1890; and Margaret Bourke-White’s photograph Bolshevic Babies in the Nursery, AMO Automobile Factory, 1934. Bourke-White became the first American female war photojournalist, gaining unprecedented access to photograph industry in the Soviet Union, was with Patton’s Third Army in 1945 and documented the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

In the exhibition, which runs November 25, 2025, through March 1, 2026, patrons of the Canton Museum of Art will get to experience 125 pieces by inspiring, talented women artists who helped shape the course of history, but were often overshadowed by men in their field. Shattered Glass, giving voice to and a platform for these women artists also commemorates the semi-quincentennial of the United States of America, and is a signature exhibition for the museum’s 90th anniversary. —