The exhibition invites visitors on a captivating journey through Cassatt’s six-decade career with 30 paintings, pastels and prints, along with the famed artist’s personal correspondence, that offer insight into a woman who was a focused professional, making a living through art. A visually radical artist, she helped shape the Impressionist movement and transformed the course of modern art, using materials and processes that pushed the creative boundaries of her era.

“Mary Cassatt at Work” explores the artist’s activity across media, revealing the daring methods she used to give form to her ideas.

Best known as an artist of women and children, this exhibition redefines Cassatt’s exploration of this topic as a serious window into the social, intellectual, domestic, and working lives of women. It also delves into issues of class, rarely discussed when examining Cassatt’s work. The exhibition also brings to light Cassatt’s role in bringing to the forefront the “invisible work” of women, making it a perceptible, serious object of study. Her work highlights roles traditionally assigned to women, including caregiving, nursing, social labor and performing music. Her attention to these tasks also testifies to the artistic work Cassatt herself performed. Viewers can see the intimate marks of her brush, etching needle, pastel stick and fingertips throughout the exhibition.

The show also illustrates Cassatt’s exceptional draftsmanship and her innovative printmaking. Inspired by Japanese woodblock prints, Cassatt drew from the colors and patterns she saw in Japanese art and used Western technique to pioneer a new method of printing.

HoMA’s exceptional collection of Japanese prints—one of the largest outside of Japan—offers a rare glimpse into the cross-cultural dialogue that inspired Cassatt’s groundbreaking work in color and printmaking.

In addition to 21 objects on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art and 1 from a private collection, the exhibition includes eight works from HoMA’s own collection. HoMA’s relationship with Cassatt dates to the Museum’s founding.

“Mary Cassatt has been a part of the museum since it opened in 1927,” said HoMA director and CEO Halona Norton-Westbrook. “Just as the Honolulu Museum of Art shares the best of Hawai‘i’s art with the world, for almost 100 years it has also been bringing the world to Hawai‘i. It is a wonderful parallel to celebrate the work of a groundbreaking female artist at a museum that was founded by an equally forward-thinking woman.”

Cassatt’s “The Banjo Lesson” (1893) was among the core group of works gifted to the museum by founder Anna Rice Cooke. The drypoint, considered modern for that era, reflects the popularity of banjo playing among middle- and upper-class women of that time. In “The Child’s Caress” (1891), a tender moment between mother and child highlights the female role of nurturer and primary caretaker.

The exhibition is accompanied by a full-color catalogue that will be available in the HoMA Shop.

Exhibition organization
"Mary Cassatt at Work" is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The organizing curators are Jennifer Thompson, Gloria and Jack Drosdick curator of European Painting and Sculpture and Curator of the John G. Johnson Collection; and Laurel Garber, Park Family associate curator of Prints and Drawings, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The curators for the Honolulu presentation are Halona Norton-Westbrook, director and CEO, and Alejandra Rojas Silva, curator of European and American art.

Accompanying exhibition of Japanese woodblock prints
“A Woman’s Perspective: Prints by Ikeda Shōen,” on view May 22-Aug. 17, includes a selection of prints by one of the first female artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries to be recognized for her achievements in the field of Japanese painting and traditional printmaking. This accompanying exhibition underscores the contributions by pioneering female artists throughout the world during this time.

About Mary Cassatt
Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) was among the leading figures of the French Impressionist movement and the most celebrated woman artist of her time. Born in Pittsburgh to a well to do family, she attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art when she was just 15. In 1866, chaperoned by her mother, she moved to Paris to study privately. Edgar Degas, with whom she became close friends, invited her to exhibit with the Impressionists in 1879, marking a turning point for Cassatt. She contributed to four of the Impressionists’ famed group exhibitions and became an ambassador for the movement in the United States. Cassatt maintained a professional practice, exhibiting and selling her works. Over the course of her career, she produced approximately 380 pastels, 320 paintings and 215 prints. She painted her final pictures in 1915 and showed a group of them at an exhibition in New York supporting women’s suffrage, a cause she supported in her later years. She was forced to stop painting as she went progressively blind.

​​The Honolulu Museum of Art is a gathering place where art, education and community converge in two iconic buildings in the heart of Honolulu. Presenting its remarkable collection and innovative exhibitions in the galleries, screening the best in new and classic cinema and offering a full curriculum of studio art classes, HoMA is a vital, transformative part of Hawai‘i’s cultural landscape accessible to all.

​​The museum inspires and uplifts the community through transformative art experiences that celebrate creativity, cultivate wonder, foster empathy and enhance knowledge to deepen our connections with one another and the world we share.