Transcending Tradition: Selection of Works from The Bennett Collection of Women Realists

Transcending Tradition celebrates women figurative realist painters who have changed the landscape for women in the arts. Featuring iconic paintings from The Bennett Collection, this exhibition highlights work by both historical and contemporary women painters, such as Artemesia Gentileschi, Mary Cassatt, Elaine de Kooning, Andrea Kowch, Zoey Frank, Katie O’Hagan, and many more.

Throughout history, women artists have struggled for recognition. Throughout history, women artists have faced resistance to creating art and had to overcome societal rules and traditions to follow their passion. In every sense, to create art, women had to be transcenders — people who stepped beyond tradition and its limitations in order to find success as an artist.

The hope of this exhibition is to give insight into the struggles and challenges women artists have historically faced and to empower women artists of today that breaking tradition, in this context, is not a misdeed but rather a noble and necessary act that is the predicate for liberation, self-actualization, and acceptance.

Transcending Tradition is a selection of artwork from The Bennett Collection, a growing collection of figurative realist paintings by women artists founded by San Antonio art collectors Steven Alan Bennett and Dr. Elaine Melotti Schmidt. The Bennett Collection, in total, was generously gifted to the Muskegon Museum of Art as part of a museum expansion initiative to focus on supporting and collecting work by women artists, both historical and contemporary. The exhibition will premiere with the grand opening of the museum expansion, officially named the Steven Alan Bennett and Dr. Elaine Melotti Schmidt Pavilion, in February 2025.