New York, NY — Lincoln Glenn Gallery is pleased to announce 250 Years: American Women Artists and the Nation's Story, a landmark exhibition celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States through the achievements of American women artists. On view from October 1 through December 4, 2026, at the gallery's Upper East Side location, the exhibition brings together works created across every decade of the nation's history, offering a rare opportunity to view 250 years of American art through the eyes and hands of women.
Spanning from the Revolutionary era to the present day, the exhibition highlights artists who worked despite the social, educational, and professional barriers that often limited women's participation in the arts. Through portraiture, landscape, still life, abstraction, sculpture, and contemporary practice, 250 Years reveals the remarkable continuity of artistic achievement that has helped shape American culture since the nation's founding.
Beginning with an eighteenth-century silhouette by Sarah Harrington and early nineteenth-century works by pioneering miniaturists including Mary Way, Anna Claypoole Peale, Sarah Goodridge, Eliza Goodridge, Susannah Paine, and Clarissa Peters, the exhibition traces the emergence of professional women artists in the young republic. These artists worked at a time when formal artistic training and public recognition were often inaccessible to women, yet they established careers that contributed significantly to the development of American art.
The exhibition continues through the nineteenth century with works by Sarah Miriam Peale, Mary Jane Peale, Elizabeth Williams, Mary Russell Smith, Emily Cole, and Laura Woodward, artists who expanded the possibilities for women within portraiture, still life, botanical illustration, and landscape painting. Their works reflect a nation undergoing rapid growth while demonstrating the increasing visibility of women within the cultural sphere.
Twentieth-century highlights include paintings, prints, and sculpture by Mary Cassatt, Louise Cox, Amy Londoner, Harriet Whitney Frishmuth, Grace Hill Turnbull, Natalie Van Vleck, Georgina Klitgaard, Virginia Berresford, Ida O'Keeffe, Helen Lundeberg, Juanita Guccione, Nell Blaine, Mercedes Matter, Lee Bontecou, Diana Kurz, Sherron Francis, Harmony Hammond, Yvonne Jacquette, and Emmi Whitehorse. Together, these artists chart the evolution of American modernism and postwar abstraction while reflecting broader social and cultural transformations across the century.
The exhibition culminates with works by contemporary artists including Lynda Benglis, Teruko Yokoi, and Margaret Thompson, demonstrating the continuing vitality and diversity of women's contributions to American art in the twenty-first century.
As the United States marks its semiquincentennial, 250 Years: American Women Artists and the Nation's Story invites viewers to reconsider the nation's history through a lens of artistic achievement, highlighting the individuals whose contributions have too often remained underrepresented within traditional narratives of American art.
An illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 AM to 6 PM. For additional information or general inquiries, please contact Lincoln Glenn Gallery at gallery@lincolnglenn.com or (646) 764-9065. For press inquiries, please contact Jenny Mushkin Goldman at jenny@agencyesta.com.