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Kathe Kollwitz, Activist through Art
Kathë Kollwitz, 1867-1945 Kathë Kollowitz (say the W like a V), is known for her prints that protest a social situation from her times, or show the profound grief of a parent whose child has died. Print Making to Make a Statement Print making was a choice that she...
Mary Cassatt, American Impressionist
Mary Cassatt, American Impressionist, 1844-1926 Mary Cassatt was a wealthy American woman who is known for painting other wealthy women in (more or less) proper places – at home, with children, at the opera. At first glance, you might think she was proper herself. But...
Alma Woodsey Thomas, African American Abstract Artist
If you can name one abstract painter, he’s probably a man. But women painted abstractly too, and in fact the first artist to achieve abstraction in a painting was a woman, artist Lee Krasner. Sometimes it may seem like only men were abstract painters, but it’s not...
Hedy Lamarr and Frequency Hopping
Sometimes, an invention is invented because someone makes an imaginative leap from one thing to another. That can be why a regular person comes up with a clever new innovation that the experts didn’t see—the expert is focused on their one area of expertise, that they...
Sarah Goode, Black Inventor of the Cabinet Bed
Sarah E. Goode (1855-1905) was the first African American woman to be awarded a U.S. Patent, for a cabinet bed, which would fold up during the day “so as to occupy less space, and made generally to resemble some article of furniture when so folded.” Her patent was...
Marjorie Joyner and the Permanent Wave Machine
Not every invention is a brand new idea, out of the blue. Many inventions are an improvement on an older idea. People made toast before there were toasters, for example, but once we had electricity, we could use electricity to make toast, instead of risking burning...
Rosa Bonheur Wears the Pants
Imagine you're going to walk out into pastures to draw horses and sheep from life, or to the slaughter house, to see what the muscles of animals look like under the skin (better to paint them) but you have to do it in a long skirt, that brushes the ground. A long...
The Taking Tree: A Selfish Parody by Shrill Travesty
Has The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein always bothered you? When I was a kid, my brother and I devoured the Shel Silverstein poetry books, such as Where the Sidewalk Ends. Quirky things like a little girl who eats and entire elephant didn't bother me. But I remember...
Sofanisba Anguissola, Painter, 1532-1625
Sofanisba Anguissola was a portrait painter during the Italian Renaissance. (You may have heard of other Renaissance painters such as Artemesia Gentileschi, Michangelo and Leonardo DaVinci.) She was born in 1532 in Cremona, Italy to a family of minor nobility. Her...
A Naked Baby Doll at the Check out Stand
Dolls for Boys When my son was a toddler, he adopted one of his older sister's dolls, declared it a boy doll instead of a girl doll and renamed it. Despite the wide selection of clothes available, he preferred that his doll was naked. I was cool with all of that, so...
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