Exhibitions

If New York City Tourism is in need of inspiration, it would do well to stop by Poster House. A new exhibition at the Chelsea museum, “Wonder City of the World: New York City Travel Posters,” shows how the city’s image has been made and marketed over the past 120 years.
Today, New York is best-known as “The Big Apple” or “The City That Never Sleeps,” but an earlier sobriquet was “Wonder City,” as deployed in the show’s title. Coined by marketers in the final decades of the 19th century, it aptly described a city that had shot miraculously skyward following the completion of the Erie Canal. Other nicknames, such as “American Cosmopolis” or “The Foremost City in the World,” never quite caught on.
D.N.A., New York/Anchor Line (ca. 1910). Courtesy Poster House.
The attraction of the city itself may seem eternal and obvious, but as mid-19th-century railway advertisements make clear, New York was once seen more as a gateway to the Hudson Valley. This included the towns of Ballston Spa, Sharon Springs, and Saratoga Springs, which by the 1870s was the leading recuperative (and gambling) destination of choice for the country’s elite.
Joseph Pennell, That Liberty Shall Not Perish from the Earth (1918​). Courtesy Poster House.
Major landmarks erected at the turn of the century shifted the focus. First, there was the Brooklyn Bridge, opened in 1883, when it was the world’s longest suspension bridge. Then came the Statue of Liberty in 1886, which was briefly America’s tallest structure. Third came an electrified subway in 1904.
David Klein, New York/TWA (1956). Courtesy Poster House.
These architectural marvels dominated cruise ship advertisements, encouraging Europeans to travel from the Old World to the New. An Anchor Lines poster from 1910 shows New York’s downtown golden early morning light with a ship passing the Statue of Liberty. Similarly, a naturalistic effort from French Lines in 1920 captures the scale of the city, with the likes of the Singer Building and the Woolworth Building peeking above the SS France.
Tomoko Miho, Wall St. (1968). Courtesy Poster House.
In the time between these posters, the First World War took place and New York’s icons became stand-ins symbolizing the nation. The city’s backdrop was now blackened and used to cajole patriots to buy “war savings stamps.”
Designer unknown, War Savings Stamps (1918). Courtesy Poster House.
Bleaker still was Joseph Pennell’s 1918 scene of New York aflame with German bombers above and u-boats below. Lady Liberty is decapitated, and text at the poster’s bottom reads “That Liberty Shall Not Perish From The Earth.” Originally, Pennell had penned a blunter, less poetic refrain: “Buy Liberty Bonds Or You Will See This.”
Joseph Binder, New York World’s Fair: The World of Tomorrow (1939). Courtesy Poster House.
By the late 1940s, sea travel was slowly giving way to air. Accordingly, the city’s scale was presented from on high, as in TWA’s 1947 poster by Frank Soltesz, which shows the pink promise of the metropolis far below. The city also begins to be fragmented, its icons layered on top of each other, such as with Swiss Air’s “Over Night To The USA,” which smashes together Rockefeller Center, the Manhattan Bridge, and the downtown skyline. Many adopt a Star-Spangled Banner color theme.
Frank Soltesz, TWA/Etats-Unis (c. 1947). Courtesy Poster House.
The city abstracts further with the approach of the 1960s. Most notable are the color block images made by David Klein for TWA. Six are on show here, though not all were used. Lady Liberty features prominently, sometimes illuminating the names of the city’s landmarks, other times standing alongside similar icons.
Edward McKnight Kauffer, American Airlines to New York (c. 1948). Courtesy Poster House.
Klein’s work also shows the turn to celebrate New York’s nightlife, most vividly through depictions of Times Square, one of which is now in the Museum of Modern Art‘s collection. Accompanying nocturnal New York is the city’s sexy side, as shown in Pan Am’s collage poster cut from magazines, which shows young men and women living the good life.
Henri Ott, Swissair/USA (1949). Courtesy Poster House.
The exhibition closes with a group of Japanese-American designer Tomoko Miho’s minimalist posters from the late 1960s, which refigure New York’s landmarks. There’s a Verazzano Bridge shrouded in red fog and a Wall Street megalith made of blocks of glass marked with stock price listings, images so contemporary they might seem new.
David Klein, TWA Superjets (c. 1960). Courtesy Poster House.​
Peter Teubner, Harlem (1968)​. Photo: courtesy Poster House.
“Wonder City of the World: New York City Travel Posters” is on view at Poster House, 119 W 23rd St, New York, through September 8.
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Gallery Weekend Beijing (GWBJ) returns at the tail end of a still fairly cool spring, and this time it is filled with more excitement and activities compared to last year. Perhaps it is even too packed as two art fairs, Jingart and the Beijing Dangdai Art Fair, have synchronized their start dates with the annual event.
The gallery weekend has clearly made a sincere effort to attract younger visitors and collectors, tapping young curators and inviting 30-year-old collector Aria Yang to serve as program director. These efforts have paid off, as evident during the VIP days, with many galleries reporting the presence of numerous new faces and a younger, more diverse crowd interested in purchasing art.
However, painting remains the dominant medium. This might be a reflection of the market returning to conservatism and engaging new collector groups during economic slowdowns. As for prices, most range between $20,000 to $50,000. Gallery Weekend runs from May 24 to June 2. On the opening day, we quickly surveyed all the galleries and selected five artists who created a significant buzz on the scene.
Zhou Yilun
Installation view of Zhou Yilun’s “SANLIANZMK” at Beijing Commune.
Who: Zhou Yilun (b. 1983) studied in Hangzhou at the China Academy of Art, and his practice often involves reimagining seemingly redundant everyday objects, such as internet images, decorations, and furniture.
Based in: Hangzhou, China
Showing at: Beijing Commune
Why You Should Pay Attention: Zhou’s resume includes several recent solo exhibitions at top art institutions in China, such as the Fosun Foundation, CC Foundation & Art Centre, and Start Museum. This is his fourth show at Beijing Commune. The show’s title, “SANLIANZMK,”  features random and meaningless letters often seen in Zhou’s work, commonly used in architectural templates and everyday consumer scenarios. The original expansive gallery space showcased four low huts and a “stage” filled with bizarre, crudely made sculptures, including Zhou’s reimagining of the transformation and evolution of Acropolis sculptures.
In his other paintings, familiar religious icons, modern celebrities, and newly added cartoon characters appear strange against mottled backgrounds but remain vaguely recognizable. Zhou views this as a game of images and perception, re-examining the relationships between the self and the external, order and chaos, meaning and action, and the everyday and art. According to gallery’s founder, Leng Lin, Zhou is “obsessed with the collision between ‘objects’ and finds support in their mutual clashes.” Additionally, the show netted Beijing Commune GWBJ’s “Best Gallery” at its opening dinner.
Qiu Zhijie
“Qiu Zhijie: Eco-Lab” Photo: Galleria Continua，©️ Artist and Galleria Continua.
Who: Qiu Zhijie (b. 1969) is an artist who needs no introduction to China, a leading contemporary Chinese artist who works primarily in video and photography, and whose creative activities also encompass calligraphy, ink painting, installations, theater, and more. 
Based in: Hangzhou, China
Showing at: Galleria Continua
Why You Should Pay Attention: Qiu once curated China’s earliest video art exhibition in 1996 and served as the curator of the 9th Shanghai Biennale in 2012. In 2017, he was the curator of the Chinese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. He is also an enthusiast of art education. Qiu was recently appointed as the president of the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, one of China’s top eight art academies.
However, this dynamo artist is still making new waves. This time, he has created an “Eco-Lab” at Galleria Continua in Beijing, showcasing a fusion of art and science, reflecting the intricate relationships between the biosphere, lithosphere, atmosphere, and geosphere. In this show, the artist brings us a world encompassing everything from viruses to celestial bodies, and the changes and connections between this world and the species that inhabit it. You will see various changes happening simultaneously: plants growing, wood rotting, mold spreading, mushrooms sprouting, silkworms spinning silk, stones weathering, crystals forming on rocks, stalactites slowly taking shape…
Qiu’s activities at Gallery Weekend Beijing don’t stop there. In anticipation of the Paris 2024 Olympics, as part of the Public Sector of GWBJ, Qiu Zhijie is spearheading a “Poetry Marathon” to collect and exhibit poetry contributions from children worldwide.
Wenjue
Works by Wenjue, BANK, Visiting Sector of Gallery Weekend Beijing. Photo: Cathy Fan.
Who: Wenjue (b. 2001) studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris in 2015 and then at Atelier François Legrand in 2016. 
Based in: Shanghai, China
Showing at: BANK (Visiting Sector)
Why You Should Pay Attention: Wenjue might be the youngest artist at this GWBJ edition. However, whether at the previous Art Basel Hong Kong or on social media, his strong appeal to collectors, especially those of his generation, is evident. This artist’s work consistently revolves around the experimental use of oil painting, creating a relief-like effect similar to a “cabinet of curiosities” through accumulating physical textures in paint and mixed media. His paintings, priced at RMB 70,000 to 150,000 ($9660 to $20,700), feature a fantastical world of his creation, populated with various characters such as elves, masked figures, dragons, and dancers. Wenjue’s fascination with anime has also provided him with a wealth of creative inspiration.
Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader
Installation view, Christine Sun Kim & Thomas Mader “Lighter Than Air”, White Space, 2024. 5.23-7.13. Courtesy of the artists and White Space.
Who: Christine Sun Kim (b. 1980) and Thomas Mader’s (b. 1984) collaborative practice has long centered around themes such as signed and spoken languages, Deaf history, games, and wordplay. Approaching the complexities of communication with specificity and nuance, their work often parodies and questions social stereotypes and prejudices with a sense of humor.
Based in: Berlin, Germany
Showing at: White Space
Why You Should Pay Attention: Even though the gallery space is far from the city center, it hasn’t stopped the artist duo from becoming the talk of the event. This is the first solo exhibition in China for them, showcasing their latest paintings, videos, and installations, priced at RMB 90,000 to 220,000 ($12,000 to $30,000). The exhibition’s title, “Lighter than Air,” originally refers to flying objects like hot air balloons and airships and gases with lower density than air.
In this exhibition, this concept is integrated into various expressions related to “inhaling” and “exhaling” in both sign language and spoken language. ATTENTION is a dynamic installation piece. In American Sign Language (ASL), attention can be attracted by waving a hand downward or pointing at someone or something. Reflecting these expressions, the two large inflatable arms in “ATTENTION” intermittently point at a worn stone. The rising and falling motion of “inflating-deflating” makes the arms move like a dance, constantly drawing the viewers’ gaze. This highlights the semantics of ASL in space and body, hinting at the erosion of people’s attention in the real environment.
Timur Si-Qin
Installation view of Timur Si-Qin’s “Milk Lake Rock” at Magician Space, 2024.
Who: Timur Si-Qin (b. 1984) was born in Berlin and later moved to the southwestern United States. He has a unique background, growing up in a family with German, Mongolian/Chinese, and San Carlos Apache Native American heritage. Diverse cultural perspectives, Indigenous experiences, and global culture deeply influence his works. 
Based in: New York
Showing at: Magician Space
Why You Should Pay Attention:  During a trip to the Hengduan Mountains, often described as a cradle of species evolution and one of China’s most culturally diverse regions, Timur Si-Qin was inspired by how different cultures show respect for nature through plants. His new works visualize and sanctify plants unique to the Hengduan Mountains, drawing inspiration from Sanxingdui and Dunhuang murals. For him, these forms represent the dialect expressions of nature worship and sacred concepts across cultures.
The artist uses his photographs, computer modeling, hyper-realistic rendering techniques, and 3D-printed sculptures to present natural landscapes. The result challenges traditional boundaries between nature and culture, human and non-human, organic and synthetic. Against the backdrop of climate change and the biodiversity crisis, his work envisions a new spiritual accord to reestablish the sanctity of nature in our globalized and technologically saturated world. The question of how to return to a culture that reveres nature has been central to his recent explorations, with art serving as a powerful medium for secular spirituality.
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On the Isle of Lewis in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, peat—that spongy stuff found in bogs and made of partly decomposed vegetation and organic matter—has long been a vital resource for heating, cooking, and yes, making whisky. Peat has also proven an invaluable keeper of the island’s past. Waterlogged, acidic and oxygen poor, it slows decay, and as a result remarkable artifacts have been pulled from the bogs that cover roughly a third of the island.
One such item is a 2,500-year-old clay pot from Achmore (“big field” in Gaelic) that dates from a time when the island was gradually transitioning to the Iron Age. Simple and unadorned, it stands as an exceptionally rare example of craftsmanship prior to the arrival of the Vikings.
The 2,500-year-old clay pot from Achmore. Photo: National Museums Scotland.
It’s one of more than 40 artifacts that National Museums Scotland has sent to Lewis on loan. The artifacts are being exhibited at two local institutions, Comunn Eachdraidh Nis and Kinloch Historical Society Museum, as part of NMS’ national strategy to share its collection and expertise across the country.
At Nis, a local community center in North Lewis, “na Dorsan” (The Doors) is being staged on the centennial anniversary of the area’s resettlement, following the forced land clearances in the late 18th century. Through fragments of pottery, carved animal bones, wooden instruments, and metal tools, the exhibition tells the local region’s story from early farmers 6,000 years ago through to the first millennium C.E.
Group of ax heads that date from 3800 B.C.E. to 2500 B.C.E. Photo: National Museums Scotland.
“This exhibition launch will be the first in a series of community events to celebrate the centenary, culminating in the unveiling of a stone monument by Urras Oighreachd Ghabhsainn later this year,” said Anne Macleod, operations manager at Comunn Eachdraidh Nis.
The Kinloch Historical Society Museum will stage “Archaeology Homecoming” through March 2025. Alongside the Achmore pot, the museum is exhibiting a group of Neolithic ax heads that date as far back as 3,800 B.C.E. Also of interest is a Viking bronze buckle that features an intricate looping pattern. It is believed to have been cast somewhere in Scandinavia before making its way to Lewis.
A scoop or ladle made from horn. Photo: National Museums Scotland.
“The partnership with National Museum of Scotland is at the heart of sharing and learning about the history of our area,” said Anna MacKenzie, heritage manager at Kinloch Historical Society. “As the name Archaeology Homecoming suggests, this will be the first time these chance finds will be on display in Lochs.”
The earliest evidence of human activity on Lewis date back to 6,000 B.C.E with the inhabitants gradually clearing woodlands and developing farms. Gaelic-speaking peoples arrived in the first century C.E., followed by the Picts, and the Vikings, who settled on Lewis in the ninth century. The island’s most famous archeological discovery are the Lewis chessmen, ornately carved pieces of walrus ivory that were found in 1831 and are held jointly by the British Museum and National Museum of Scotland.
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A new exhibition of work by Brian Donnelly, aka KAWS, at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh puts the contemporary artist in conversation with his storied predecessor.
The show “KAWS + Warhol” opened May 17, in true Warholian spirit, with a star-studded guest list including Pusha T, shoe designer John Geiger, and graffiti legend Futura. It was envisioned by Patrick Moore, the museum’s outgoing director who curated the exhibition, when he noticed how KAWS’s 2021 show at Skarstedt Gallery in New York drew a large young crowd. Moore hoped to bring a similar spirit to the Warhol Museum, particularly on its 30th anniversary, while showcasing how the Pop artist’s legacy endures in the living likes of KAWS.
Installation view of “KAWS + Warhol” at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2024. Photo by Adam Schrader.
For example, a crowd favorite at the exhibition was the placement of the Warhol’s film Blow Job (1964) with two of KAWs’s KAWSBob paintings, the artist’s dark parody of the children’s cartoon character SpongeBob.
“I said to Brian, ‘Have you seen this film Blow Job.’ He’s like, ‘no.’ And I said, ‘let’s look at,’” Moore said. “If you know the title, you know what’s going on. [The subject of the film], at many points, throws his head back and it’s unclear: is he in pain? Is he having pleasure? And then we have Brian reinterpreting Sponge Bob as KAWSBob in the same way.”
To Moore, the similarities go on from there. He equates Warhol’s penchant for repetition and his cadre of Superstars with how KAWS treats his characters as motifs. He sees their shared fascinations with sex and destruction.
Brian Donnelly, aka KAWS, in front of his Companion 2020 and Andy Warhol’s Ambulance Disaster (1963) at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Photo by Adam Schrader.
The exhibition’s Instagrammable centerpiece pairs Warhol’s Ambulance Disaster with KAWS’s Companion 2020. It was the first coupling Moore showed Donnelly when asking him to do the show. The Warhol work replicates a newspaper photograph of an ambulance in a crash using silkscreen ink on linen. KAWS’s sculpture is a painted bronze of a cartoon-like character lying face down. Moore loved how “they’re treating death in a very different way.”
Donnelly agreed with Moore’s assessment. “I just think there’s a sense of tragedy and seeing Companion 2020 alone might feel more about exhaustion or dealing with the state of the world that we’re in,” he said. “But having it in context with the ambulance crash, it feel like a much more tragic work.”
Andy Warhol, Silver Clouds (1966), on view at “KAWS + Warhol” at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2024. Photo by Adam Schrader.
At least one guest identified a missed opportunity to pair Warhol’s Silver Clouds—an installation of pillow-shaped silver balloons filled with helium—with KAWS’s Space, a silver-colored sculpture of one of his characters as an astronaut. And not everybody was immediately a fan.
Before the show opened, Donnelly said he was most looking forward to sharing his artwork in person with the people of Pittsburgh who might only be familiar with his work through online images. When we caught up with him after the show, Donnelly said the preview was a blur but remembered one woman admitting to him she “wasn’t always a fan” but warmed to him after seeing his works in person.
“The thing about Warhol: there’s so many bodies of work to delve into and there’s so much that’s not in the show, like we didn’t tap into any of the fashion overlapping with him,” Donnelly said. He expressed interest in doing a second show with Warhol to dive into further comparisons.
Warhol Museum director Patrick Moore at the “KAWS + Warhol” exhibition at the museum. Photo by Adam Schrader.
The artist professed an enduring interest in Warhol’s work, especially because he “opened the door” for other Pop artists. He is especially inspired by Warhol’s work with fashion and his toy paintings—unsurprising for an artist for whom toys have long been a medium.
“I choose to work in those outlets because that’s how a lot of work reached me. And I constantly think about how my work could disseminate,” he said. “I love the connection I get to have through making objects and clothing. I don’t think it would be possible from me just making paintings, drawings, sculpture.”
Donnelly got his start on the streets of New York in the ’90s, his graffiti work paving the way for his paintings and sculptures that leaned into a similar cartoon-like aesthetic. From 1999, his characters—such as Chum, Companion, BFF, and Bendy—would also appear for sale as vinyl figurines, sparking off a still-thriving marketplace for the artist. Over his career, he has partnered with brands including Nike, Dior, Uniqlo, and Disney to create limited-edition products.
Preview of the “KAWS + Warhol” exhibition at the Andy Warhol Museum with a sculpture by KAWS seen installed outdoors. Photo by Adam Schrader.
KAWS’s cartoon-centric style and inspirations echo Warhol’s own fascination with consumer branding and advertising. In the show, Warhol’s Brillo boxes are staged before a wall of 2,000 cereal boxes KAWS made in collaboration with General Mills featuring beloved characters such as Count Chocula and FrankenBerry.
“It’s funny. I never really think about making work targeted for children at all,” said Donnelly, who has two children. “With General Mills, that’s just something I always loved—cereal box graphics, and especially the monsters, started around the time I was born. I wanted to make work that can be in bodegas and shopping centers and have it on the shelf with all the stuff I grew up on.”
Installation view of “KAWS + Warhol” at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2024. Photo by Adam Schrader.
Interestingly, the sweetness of the breakfast food could even be smelled in the room with the cereal boxes, creating what could be described as an immersive experience. Still, Donnelly insisted: “I’m not trying to theme-park it”—an interesting comment when comparing KAWS, a one-time street artist, with the likes of Banksy, the world’s most beloved anonymous street artist, whose Dismaland theme park was direct criticism of consumerism.
Much like Warhol, Donnelly himself is not against consumerism and appreciates “making good things and putting it out in the world.” He also praised artists like Keith Haring that helped further break down such barriers.
“Even today it feels a bit taboo working within the commercial space and with larger companies, even though it’s way more accepted now than it was 10 years ago,” he said. “Keith opened the Pop Shop and put the line in the sand just said, ‘Listen, this is my interest whether you accept it or not. This is kind of the direction I’m going.’ And I always loved that about him.”
Andy Warhol’s Blow Job (1964) reflected in a KAWS canvas. Photo by Adam Schrader.
For centuries, since the likes of Albrecht Dürer, artists have been trying to spur the patron, the wealthy businessmen who funded their work. Now, artists like KAWS are turning to corporate partnerships.
“I would imagine that throughout history all artists had to think about how to be clever and get the work that they want made,” Donnelly said, when asked about the phenomenon. “And there’s tons of opportunities to make work and subsidize other works you need to get made.”
Installation view of “KAWS + Warhol” at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2024. Photo by Adam Schrader.
But when it came to creating merchandise for the show, KAWS went for a more reverent approach. Where he had once (illegally) painted his characters over Warhol’s Chanel No. 5 posters, he opted not to appropriate the Pop artist’s work this time, even with the Warhol Foundation’s blessing. His previous graffiti work, after all, was of an era “when I was just stealing stuff, painting over, and putting it out,” he said. Now, his art coexists with Warhol’s on the exhibition’s official merchandise, without one overstepping the other.
“It’s one thing to work with somebody who’s here that I could be in a room with and have an agreement,” he explained. “I just want to be really respectful of the work.”
“KAWS + Warhol” is on view at the Andy Warhol Museum, 117 Sandusky Street, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, through January 20, 2025. 
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For all of her boldness as the only American to be a member of the French Impressionists, Mary Cassatt is often typecast as a painter of (dull) domestic scenes. Her mostly male colleagues—now being celebrated in exhibitions marking 150 years since the first Impressionist exhibition—used free brushwork to paint scenes of modern life in vivid color, often en plein air (outside). Cassatt, on the other hand, mostly stayed in.
“Perpetual afternoon tea” is what a 1954 review in Art News by Edgar P. Richardson claimed Cassatt painted. “Tea, clothes, and nursery; nursery, clothes, and tea.”
Photos of Cassatt reinforce the idea that she was a woman steeped in comfortable bourgeois life. No photographs exist of her studio or of her at work; instead, she’s seen sitting in a garden, reading a newspaper, wearing a nice hat. In other words, in the images we have left of her she looks like the women she portrayed in around 320 paintings, 380 pastels, and 215 prints over the course of her 50-year career.
Mary Cassatt, Maternal Caress (1896). Courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art.
“Mary Cassatt at Work,” an exhibition of over 130 artworks and personal correspondence on view now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (the PMA has 84 works by the artist, one of the largest institutional collections of the artist in the United States), flips this tea party narrative on its saucer. If Cassatt painted women caring for children or tending to domestic duties, we could choose to read these images as documenting the sort of women’s work that is often deemed effortless or invisible. Home maintenance and paid or unpaid childcare populate her work. Cassatt’s labor is itself a subject of the exhibition, after the museum embarked on two years of in-depth technical study of her works.
This is first large exhibition of the artist in the United States in over 25 years, and around three times more extensive than the last (a 1998–99 exhibition that traveled to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). It will also show at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco’s Legion of Honor after it closes at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in September.
While Cassatt’s work has been shown in group exhibitions and shows of women Impressionists (which exhibition co-curator Jennifer Thompson claims Cassatt would have hated), she hasn’t seen the same kind of focused attention as her peers. “We’re at a moment with her male colleagues where we do very focused shows. We have Cézanne rocks-and-quarry paintings, and we have Renoir nude paintings,” Thompson says. “But for the female Impressionists we haven’t gotten beyond the big monographic shows.”
Mary Cassatt, A Goodnight Hug (1880). Courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Thompson and her co-curator, Laurel Garber, wanted to dig deeper and present something new about Cassatt, noticing that while scholars had begun closer examinations of individual Cassatt works, one gap was technical study. There are a few reasons why women are less often studied this way. For one thing, their works are more likely to be in private hands than institutional collections where they could be studied more easily. (Case in point: some 16 private collectors are loaning their works to this Cassatt show.) And when works are held by museums, because they might have just one or two examples by a well-known female artist, they are always on view and therefore never taken from the gallery wall to the conservation lab.
“Documentation of Cassatt’s process is lacking in comparison to that of her contemporaries,” writes conservator Teresa A. Lignelli in the exhibition catalogue. “There are no studio photographs of Cassatt at work, no receipts for art supplies, and—despite an abundance of letters—scant reference to her practice in known correspondence. Instead, the paintings themselves are telling.”
Cassatt’s paintings were studied using raking light, ultraviolet visible fluorescence, infrared reflectography, and X-radiography, and the results of this research are visible at several points in the exhibition. For the painting A Woman and a Girl Driving (1881), for example, an infrared image shows how Cassatt reworked the composition of her sister driving a carriage led by Bichette, the family pony. Cassatt played with the position of the carriage wheel spokes, groom, and trees in the background, ultimately landing on a composition that emphasized movement.
The team at the PMA also x-rayed some of their pastels. “We’re not sure if anyone else has ever done that,” Thompson says. “That was helpful in understanding that, not surprisingly, she was making a great number of changes in works from the ’70s and early ’80s, but then she develops a very confident line in her later pastels and is leaving very visible signs of her work.” In a ca. 1879 pastel titled At the Theater (Au théâtre), an x-ray image that is part of the exhibition reveals that Cassatt adjusted the size and angle of the fan held by the woman in the theater box, varying how much of the theater’s balconies were visible.
Mary Cassatt, Little Girl in a Blue Armchair (1877-78). Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Otherwise, by studying Cassatt’s works closely, conservators were able to tease out certain routines. She generally worked on top of a first draft, scraped and reworked her pieces, used materials with a confident spontaneity, and worked fast. Though Cassatt came from a self-made and well-to-do family, it was always clear to her that her painting career would have to pay for itself—and she worked in haste.
This meant that sometimes she had to transport paintings that hadn’t had time to fully dry, using pins to create a distance between stacked canvases; these pinholes and marks are still visible at the corners and edges of some of her paintings. And for Maternal Caress (1896) in the PMA collection, correspondence reveals that the artist completed the canvas on July 11, 1896 and that within four days it was both delivered to her dealer Paul Durand-Ruel and sold. It wasn’t completely dry when Durand-Ruel framed it, so paint transferred from the canvas to the frame’s rabbet edge (which also confirms that the current frame is original).
“With the paintings, we’re still at very early days in terms of understanding how she was working,” says Thompson of the research that led to the exhibition. “We’re hoping that this project will inspire museums and collectors to start to look closely at their Cassatt paintings.”
“Mary Cassatt at Work” is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, May 18-September 8, 2024, and at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Legion of Honor, October 25, 2024-January 26, 2025. 
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