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NASTY WOMEN

Throughout history, there have been nasty women—feisty path-breakers who make themselves heard. And the Met’s walls are full of them, as you’ll find out on the Nasty Women tour!

It might seem that the women in the Met are mostly Virgin Marys or bathing beauties. In fact, however, there are powerful and ambitious—even intimidating—women hidden throughout the collection.

From an entire gallery dedicated to a female Pharaoh to paintings by and of famous suffragettes, the Met has a surprisingly rich collection of women who ruled, frightened, patronized, and politicked—in short, role models for today’s liberated woman.

So come on our fun and informative two-hour walking tour of the Met, and learn about:

 

  • the queen who started Egypt’s Valley of the Kings
  • the fertility goddess who preceded Zeus in the Greek world
  • the female monsters of Ancient Greek mythology
  • the first famous woman painter
  • Marie Antoinette’s “marketing director”
  • an 18th century woman scientist
  • the courtesan who stared down the Jacobins of Revolutionary France
  • the feminism of Mary Cassatt’s paintings
  • the Met’s great suffragette donor
    and much more

Come learn about woman of the past who persisted—and triumphed—on the Nasty Women of the Metropolitan tour!

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She Was An Artist At A Time When Women Weren’t Supposed To Pick Up A Paintbrush

Artemisia Gentileschi (featured on our tour) is one of the greatest Nasty Women of art history. Artemisia Gentileschi turned the horrors of her own life – repression, injustice, rape – into brutal biblical paintings that were also a war cry for oppressed women. Because of the restrictions placed on woman, she was unable to enter traditional artistic training system as an apprentice or assistant of an established studio. Instead she trained with her father Orazio, who boasted of her talent that far surpassed that of her brothers.
This is HER-STORY. Tickets and info bit.ly/2kMS8Rx

Posted by Nasty Women Tour on Saturday, June 1, 2019

Professor Lear discusses the portrait of Gertrude Stein

Professor Andrew Lear discusses the portrait of Gertrude Stein with the Nasty Women Tour group at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. To book tickets and more info click here >> bit.ly/2kMS8Rx

Posted by Nasty Women Tour on Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Review of the Shady Ladies Tour

Another great tour review from two happy guests! Take the tour today >> /bit.ly/2kMS8Rx

Posted by Nasty Women Tour on Friday, January 19, 2018

SEEN ON THIS TOUR

Edith Minturn Stokes

John Singer Sargent portrayed Edith Minturn Stokes in a bicycling costume, with a boater hat balanced casually on her hip—and her husband in the shadows behind her. “No shrinking violet she,” he seems to tell us. Indeed, this is what Edith Stokes was like. She was only persuaded to get married with difficulty and was an active philanthropist—the President of the New York Kindergarten Association and founder of a sewing school for immigrant women. She also regularly modeled for Daniel Chester French, whose 65-foot high “The Republic” at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 was modeled on her.

Marie-Denise Villers

After the French Revolution, when the annual Salon was opened to artists who were not members of the Royal Academy, a wave of women artists arrived. Most have been forgotten now. Indeed, until recently most of their works (including this one) were attributed to better-known artists, such as David. This picture of Charlotte du Val d’Ognes by Marie-Denise Villers is particularly interesting, in that it is a view of a woman artist by a woman artist. Women are not passive objects here: women are not passive objects here, and the gaze is not male.

Julia Mamaea

Julia Mamaea was one of the most powerful women in Roman history. When her son Alexander Severus was named Emperor in 222 AD, he was only 14, and she ruled as regent for him. Indeed, even as Emperor he seems to have remained under her control, which he demonstrated by naming her his Imperial consort. In fact, she was the first woman ever officially named Empress of Rome. When they were assassinated together in 228 AD, Julia Mamaea was subjected to <em>damnatio memoriae</em>. i.e. all references to her were erased, and this bust may have been smashed at that time.

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