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Directory of Southern Women Artists

A Dynamic Index Honoring Female Creators

Untitled by Ruth Asawa
Mums in a Blue Vase by Marie Hull

Through its academic research, The Johnson Collection has worked intently to document and celebrate the achievements of artists associated with the South.

While many of the artists connected to the region are widely known and duly noted in the canon of American art history, far more fine artists—and female artists, in particular— have been overlooked. This directory seeks to address—and redress—the lack of a comprehensive codex of Southern women artists active between the late 1890s and the early 1960s, the period surveyed in TJC’s most recent book, Central to Their Lives: Southern Women Artists in the Johnson Collection.

An evolving directory to

Expand the Conversation on Female Artists

TJC’s index now has over two thousand names of established, exhibited female practitioners.

However, this index is not comprehensive and is emphatically not presented as such. Sourced from scholarly and primary materials, as well as museum archives, exhibition records, and socio-cultural records, the list is neither exhaustive nor perfect.

Intended for professional and lay audiences alike, this documentary asset offers any number of dangling threads that may, in time, entice another curious cultural scholar to pick up the trail and begin crafting a new contribution to the whole. Please contact the Collection’s Associate Registrar, Holly Watters, with any corrections or additions to this digital directory.

Methodology

With those caveats in place, the information presented includes:

  • Artist’s Name
    • Including birth and married names, nicknames, professional monikers, and pseudonyms, where applicable.
    • Alternate spellings are noted where we discovered persistent records of such variations. Marital names that were not used as an artist’s primary identity are denoted in braces.
  • Artist’s Life Dates
    • Ideally with birth and death locations, and occasionally with place of burial.
  • Southern State or States Affiliation 
    • Similar to the Collection’s overall parameters, artists are Southern by birth, residency, education, or exhibition activity.

When a listed artist is represented in The Johnson Collection, her name is linked to additional information on this website.

Artists who achieved significant professional recognition under both a maiden and married name are cross-referenced.

Frances Greene Nix by Anne Goldthwaite

Interested in More Resources?

Check out our page of online resources to learn more.