LOUISVILLE, KY.- The Speed Art Museum is presenting Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris, 1900 - 1939, an exhibition highlighting the myriad ways that American women contributed to the city’s vibrant modernist milieu. Organized by the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery this is the first exhibition to focus on the impact of American women on Paris — and of Paris on American women — from the turn of the 20th century until the outbreak of World War II.
Accompanying the exhibition is
a richly illustrated 288-page catalog, published by the National Portrait Gallery and Yale University Press and featuring essays by Asleson and scholars Zakiya R. Adair, Samuel N. Dorf, Tirza True Latimer and T. Denean Sharpley- Whiting, as well as a foreword by Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery.
Through portraiture and biography, the exhibition illuminates the accomplishments of more than 50 convention-defying women who crossed the Atlantic to pursue professional goals and lead authentic lives. On view at the Speed March 29 through June 22, Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris, 1900 - 1939 is curated by Robyn Asleson, curator of prints and drawings at the National Portrait Gallery.
“This groundbreaking exhibition highlights many maverick women artists and creatives who left a culturally conservative United States to be at the forefront of the artistic avant- garde in Paris. There, they embraced the freedom to defy traditions and genres, shaping bold, new identities and working innovatively across visual art, literature, dance, music, and theatre,” said Raphaela Platow, director of the Speed Art Museum. “By leaving behind the status quo of their home country, these women were able to challenge cultural and gender stereotypes on both sides of the Atlantic. They also shed new light on painful racial inequalities both in the U.S. and in a France that was still defining its relationships, prejudices, and perceptions of its former colonies. We are proud to share with the Louisville community this eye-opening, artistically stunning exhibition that celebrates the unconventional paths of these exceptional women.”
“This is a rare opportunity to bring together a spectacular constellation of portraits of brilliant women who shaped art, culture, literature, fashion, and the city of Paris at one of the most remarkable times in modern history,” said Erika Holmquist-Wall, chief curator and Mary and Barry Bingham Sr. curator of painting and sculpture at the Speed Art Museum. “As the Speed is actively collecting and showcasing the work of women and female-identifying artists in its collection galleries and programs, the presentation of Brilliant Exiles helps us amplify this essential work."
Brilliant Exiles reveals the dynamic role of portraiture in articulating the new identities that American women were at liberty to develop in Paris. As foreigners in a cosmopolitan city, these “exiles” escaped the constraints that limited them at home as a result of prejudices based on gender, class, race, and sexual orientation. Many used their newfound freedom to pursue culture-shifting experiments across an array of artistic disciplines. An impressive number rose to preeminence as cultural arbiters, not merely participating in important modernist initiatives, but leading them. The progressive ventures they undertook while living abroad profoundly influenced American culture and opened new possibilities for women.
Comprising more than 60 artworks, the exhibition features portraits of cultural influencers such as Josephine Baker, Elsie de Wolfe, Isadora Duncan, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Florence Mills, Anaïs Nin, Gertrude Stein, and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, created by artists including Berenice Abbott, Alice Pike Barney, Romaine Brooks, Tsuguharu Foujita, Anne Goldthwaite, Loïs Mailou Jones, Isamu Noguchi, Man Ray, Anne Estelle Rice, Augusta Savage, Edward Steichen, Laura Wheeler Waring, and Marguerite Zorach.
“By bringing the experiences of American women to the fore, Brilliant Exiles provides a counternarrative to conventional histories of Americans in Paris that focus on the interwar period and the ‘Lost Generation’ of men such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald,” said exhibition curator Robyn Asleson. “The exhibition will highlight alternative approaches to modernism developed by women, as well as the enterprises through which they catalyzed creativity and forged interconnected communities.”
Following its presentation at the Speed Art Museum, the exhibition will travel to the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia, Athens (July 19, 2025 to Nov. 2, 2025).
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