Trailblazing women have written the history of Austin art.
Start with sculptor Elisabet Ney, whose 19th-century studio in Hyde Park became the city’s first art gallery and today shines as a small museum dedicated to her life and works. Follow that with the ongoing work of her admirers among the members of early 20th-century advocacy groups, such as Austin Art League and Texas Fine Arts Association (an ancestor to the Contemporary Austin), populated almost entirely by women.
It is true that the postwar generation of artists and teachers who dominated the new fine arts program at the University of Texas were, for the most part, men. Yet they were followed by the visionary founders of Women & Their Work, which since 1977 has promoted the careers of hundreds of artists as part of a program that is recognized and admired across the country.