Mary Cassatt: An American in Paris

How did a woman from Pennsylvania become one of the leading figures in the most radical art movement in France?

Mary Cassatt defied expectations – of nationality, of gender and of artistic tradition. She was the only American to exhibit with the French Impressionists and one of the few women to challenge the male-dominated gaze of 19th-century art.

This talk explores Cassatt’s bold, unconventional depictions of women and children—not as passive muses, but as thinking, feeling subjects. It considers her complex friendship with Degas, her experiments with Japanese printmaking and the social constraints she pushed against as both an artist and a woman.

Cassatt’s work was tender, modern and quietly revolutionary. So why is she still so often left out of the Impressionist story?