An Old Fisherman's Wife

Breton Girl Looking After Plants in the Hothouse

Portrait of Cecilie Trier, née Melchior

A Limier Briquet Hound

Anna Leafing Through a Portfolio of Prints

Amelia Eliza van Leeuwen (1862-1923). Echtgenote van Christiaan Bernard Tilanus, chirurg en orthopedist te Amsterdam

Dorothea and Francesca

Une Martyre (Saint Thechla)

By a Clear Fountain

Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

Le frère et la soeur, Penmarc'h

At the River's Bend (On the River II)

Julia Ward Howe

Drikkende ung pige

Portret van Emile Auguste Carolus-Duran

Self-Portrait as a Chimera

Self-Portrait in a Spanish Costume

The Gathering at the Orchid Pavilion (front); Geese among Reeds (back)

Maternal Caress

Sappho

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Old Arrow Maker

Clasped Hands of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning

World’s Fairs were international gatherings that showcased art and technology. At the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago, women from several countries exhibited work in the Palace of Fine Arts and the “Women’s Pavilion.” Elite, white “Lady Managers” organized the Pavilion, while excluding women of color from leadership roles. The Columbian Exposition celebrated the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s genocidal landing in the Americas. Its overall vision equated whiteness and masculinity with “civilization.” Works by women artists from Japan, Cuba, and Mexico provided a limited but significant counterpoint. Here, we feature a selection of works by women who exhibited at the 1893 World’s Fair, most of them from Europe and the United States. The works from Curationist’s partner collections aren’t necessarily the objects from the Fair, but they do provide a unique survey of women artists active at the turn of the century. Note, particularly, the many portraits of famous feminists.

Women Artists at the World's Fair

Markt in Damascus

Bazaar in Damascus

A Bazaar

A Cairo Bazaar

Turkish Carpet Bazaar, Cairo

[Bazaar, Rug Merchants]

Egypt and Nubia, Volume III: Bazaar of the Coppersmiths, Cairo

Egypt and Nubia, Volume III: Bazaar of the Silk Mercers, Cairo

La foire du Caire (The Cairo Fair)

Entrance to Bazaar

Algerian Pirates

Arab Market

The Arab Jeweler

An Arab Horse Merchant

The Old Clothes Dealer, Cairo

La Foire du Caire (The Cairo Fair)

Poultry Market, Tangiers

Market Day Outside the Walls of Tangiers, Morocco

Market in Tangiers [Mercato di Tangeri]

Bazaar in Constantinopel

Bazaar in Smyrna

Kralen en stoffen kraam met verkopers in Cairo

Een bazaar in Gezirah

Arcade met zittende figuren in de parfumsouk van Tunis

Drie mannen zittend langs een weg bij de souk te Fez

Koperslagerwinkel in Cairo

Markt van Assoul in Egypte

Kruidenierswinkel met klanten in Cairo

Winkel met potten en vazen in Cairo

Arcade met liggende figuren in de souk van Tunis

Klanten bij een winkel in de souk van Tunis

Gezicht op de markt van Qasr an Nil in Caïro

Markt met handelaren en bezoekers in Jaffa

Koopman te Sousse, Tunesië

Kooplieden in een bazaar in Constantinopel

Bazaars, also known as souks, are famous markets in many parts of the world. Bazaars are common in a region extended from Morocco, across the Middle East and North Africa to as far as India and China. They have been central to daily life in cities and countryside alike for a long time. Bazaars vary a lot in their architecture, social role, and merchandise. Bazaars in busy city centers were different from those in the desert. But they all attracted diverse crowds from all walks of life, and were characterized by a capturing atmosphere that charmed European travelers, becoming a defining feature of "The Orient". In spite of changing over time, bazaars endure in many cities, still attracting visitors who enjoy the experience of times past.

Depictions of Bazaars

Two Nude Models

Two Women Friends Reclining

Damned Women (Femmes damnées)

Women Dancing in a Brothel

Two Male Nudes

Spout Vessel Depicting Two Skeletal Figures in Erotic Scene Attached to Handle

Shallow bowl with Hercules overcoming Antaeus

The Sofa

The son of the king of Babylon sees the Brahman transformed into a woman bathing and falls in love with her, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirty-fifth Night

The Bath

Album d'Études–Poses

Created by Noa Rui-Piin Weiss. 
This collection focuses on queer art in its most obvious form: depictions of same-sex intimacy. Some of these pieces were created by artists who had documented gay relationships, like The Bath by Charles Hasselwood Shannon, a scene of nude men conversing intimately in a spa. Others, like the excerpt from the Tuti-nama or Rodin’s Damned Women, were made under the cover of portraying mythological or historical themes, often for straight audiences. While some museums have retroactively labeled these works as gay, lesbian, or queer, most pieces in this collection are not explicitly described in terms of same-sex love. Yet visual signs of homosexual behavior are the lowest common denominator of this selection of queer art.

Displays of Homosexuality

Mi'Jan Celie Tho-Biaz, Ed.D. is a 2024 Curationist Critic of Color. She is a Kennedy Center Citizen Artist who moves between realms of oral history, art, media & ritual to produce forward-facing cultural projects and events. As a Huntington Library Short-Term Fellow, Mi'Jan is researching Octavia E. Butler's archives. She is also a 2023 Fulbright Specialist Awardee, a 2023-2024 New America Us@250 inaugural Fellow, and an expert speaker for the U.S. Department of State. 

Previously, Mi'Jan curated and hosted Unfinished Network's 2022 salon on the theme of multiracial democracy with CNN's Van Jones and MSNBC's Maria Teresa Kumar, and led the Gloria Steinem Initiative's public policy digital storytelling pilot at Smith College.

One of Mi'Jan's greatest joys is connecting to audiences through her story-rich talks at a range of institutions, from Carnegie Hall to the Institute of American Indian Arts to SXSW. Making history contemporary, personal and futures-dependent, she surfaces the stories that need to be heard.

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A small tin box with a sliding lid, partially opened to reveal a piece of paper covered in handwriting.

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Free Black Women’s Private Pleasures and Rest

Dalina A. Perdomo Álvarez is a 2024 Curationist Fellow. She is a Puerto Rican curator and writer, and currently Assistant Curator at the MSU Broad Art Museum. Previously, she was the 2018–2020 Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and has also worked at the Video Data Bank and The National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture. She has collaborated with several film festivals, and was selected to be the Inaugural Curatorial Fellow for the Chicago Underground Film Festival in 2021. She is a member of Blue Sky/The Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts Exhibitions Committee and is Michigan state representative for the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries. She holds an MA in Film Studies from the University of Iowa, and a BA from the University of Puerto Rico - Mayagüez.

Interior view, Treasury Department exhibits in the United States Government Building.

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Panorama of Possessions: Film, Photography, and the War of 1898

Wendyliz Martinez is 2024 Curationist Critic of Color. She earned a PhD in English and African American Studies at Penn State University. She is a City College of New York and Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow alumnus. She is writing about how Black girlhood is represented in film, social media, and literature. Particularly, she is interested in how Afro-Caribbean women writers depict Black girlhood compared to U.S. Black women writers. She also researches Black portrait photography from the 19th Century and beyond and its influence on Black visual culture. 

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A young girl looks out of the window of a log cabin. The window is covered with newspapers.

Reconstructing Black Girlhood: Reading Photos Alongside Journal Entries

Shweta Sachdeva Jha is a 2024 Curationist Fellow. She is an Associate Professor of English at Miranda House, University of Delhi. Her research lies within interstices of histories, archives and literature anchored by a feminist core. She did her doctoral studies as a Felix Scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her research publications range from studies of contemporary children’s picture books in India, history of tawa’if (courtesans and Nautch Girls) in colonial India to digital archives on college women and twentieth century genre fiction in Urdu by Muslim women. Recently awards and small grants have helped her begin a new journey into digital history, archives and writing on the visual arts. 

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Bathing Women: Desire, Wonder, and Water in Versions of a Persian Tale

Chin-Jie Melodie Liu is a 2024 Curationist Fellow. She is a Taiwanese-American artist/curator and writer based in Kamberri/Canberra, Australia. Her research and interdisciplinary practice is informed by her heritage with a focus on contested histories and collective memory. She is interested in varying forms of creative collaboration and the use of text as visual material. 

Liu is Publication Manager at _Art Monthly Australasia_, Australasia’s flagship visual arts publication, and the Events & Collections Officer at the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University (ANU), where she manages the centre's gallery and collection.  

She holds a Master of Museum and Heritage Studies and a double degree with a Bachelor of Visual Arts (First Class Honours) and a Bachelor of Arts (French & International Relations) from the ANU. Liu studied at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris on exchange in 2019. 

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Illustrating Taiwan: Travelogues and Their Visual Narratives

keondra bills freemyn is a 2024 Curationist Critic of Color. She is a DMV-based archivist, writer, Wikipedian, and former diplomat originally from South Central, Los Angeles. keondra serves as Archives Director at Black Lunch Table, a radical archiving project centering Black visual artists and operates the small press 67th Street Storytellers. A poet, essayist, and scholarly writer, she is author of the poetry collection _Things You Left Behind_ and is founder of Black Women Writers Project, a digital archival initiative highlighting the contributions of Black women and gender-expansive writers to the literary canon. Her research interests include digital archiving, memory work, and Black cultural production.

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A sepia tone carte-de-visite of a young woman, captured at the Ball & Thomas Photographic Art Gallery in Cincinnati, OH. Standing in front of an elaborate outdoor backdrop, a dark-haired woman poses before the camera, slightly smiling, dressed in a floor length checkered dress with her hair styled in a chignon. She holds a feathered dark hat in her proper left hand, with her proper right hand resting on the high back of an ornate wooden chair. The front of the chair, which faces the camera, features a patterned fabric seat, scroll and floral carvings, and an oval painting of a man and child on the chair’s back.

Bearing Witness: James Presley Ball, Black Image Making, and the Promise of Freedom in the American West

Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
Japanese, 1797–1858

Snow (Yuki), from the series "Famous Places of Edo (Edo meisho)"

United States National Museum Photographic Laboratory

Mounted Model of a Polar Bear

Mask

Photographic print of a woman on a stylized background of a scroll and snowscape

Frederic Edwin Church, American, 1826–1900

Iceberg and Ice Flower

Ski boots worn by Seba Johnson

Shawl (aso oke)

Dentures

Portrait of the Elephant  'Alam Guman

Pair of Pine Tree Vases

Leerlingen van Schule Schloss Salem tijdens een skitocht in Unterengadin

Radha

Male Figure with Strips of Hide (Nkisi)

Fantastic Hairdress with Fruit and Vegetable Motif

Buzz Aldrin on the Moon with Components of the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package

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