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In bygone era, girls channeled their talent in female academies Exhibit at Bartow Pell Mansion shows fruits of their labors By Nic Cavell ncavell@riverdalepress.com
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ebate over women’s rights today centers on topics like wage equality, with advocates pointing out that women of the same or even higher educational levels than their male peers fail to receive due recognition in the workplace. In the early 19th century, debate over gender issues had a starkly different tone, as a new exhibit showcasing American female academies at the Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum shows. Schoolgirls attending such institutions came from socially mobile families and attained high levels of artistic achievement. Nevertheless, absent respectable employment options or an education that emphasized independence, the girls’ primary concerns were with home life and family values. The careful needlework and watercolor creations on display in the exhibit provide a glimpse of schoolgirls’ concerns in the years spanning from 1800 to 1820. They used expensive metallic threads, spangles and sequins to fashion heraldic seals like “The Bliss Arms” (1802), becoming the seamstresses of their families’ aspirations. They paid tribute to the same families with painted genealogies like “Family Tree of the Tufts Family,” (1812) which makes meticulous record of marriages, births and deaths within a mélange of motifs drawn from British and Greco-Roman art. Their sport with allegory made “Hope” (1810) into a robust woman with gold shoes and an anchor; “Charity” (1820) becomes a crowned woman pulling her robe to a curtsy and holding a horn of plenty. Stitching and applying pigment to such works may have taken dozens of hours, explained curator Margaret Highland. The metallic threads and fine wooden frames of schoolgirl artworks were also financial investments, which makes it something of a wonder why one of the exhibit’s centerpieces remains unfinished. “Cornelia — These Are My Jewels” stages the conflict between a young woman with children who is visiting an older, apparently wealthier woman. The second woman holds out a chain of gemstones for the first person to observe; the younger woman gestures to her sons in turn. As in the other works, allegorical details give the key: the window beside the older woman is barred. The window by the children is open to a wooded pasture and transcendence. And yet the design is only three quarters of the way completed, with the bottom right fraction lightly penciled in. Perhaps the schoolgirl failed to complete the work that term, Ms. Hightower conjectured. Or perhaps the student took ill and died — or, just as likely, the school shuttered its doors. As the exhibit’s second curator, Bill Gemmill, explained in a phone interview, female academies, for all the refinement they espoused, were scrappy institutions. Their schoolmistresses often had more interesting biographies than their students. They include Hannah Spofford, who overcame an upbringing as an illegitimate child to become a successful fundraiser and the head of several schools including the Charlestown Academy. It was schoolmistresses and professional artists that placed the finishing touches on the schoolgirls’ art, which then migrated to mantelpieces in their parents’ households. Women like Hannah Spofford show the more enterprising side of female academies, which were the economic means for a class of socially unmoored women to provide for themselves and earn some of their due. Dynamic figures who lived more than 200 years ago, like Ms. Spofford, may still have something to demonstrate in contemporary debates.
Photo by Adrian Fussell
Where to see it ‘Accomplished Women: Schoolgirl Art From Female Academies in the Early Nineteenth Century’ is on view until June 21, and is free with museum admission. The Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum (BPMM) is open to the public Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m. It is located at 895 Shore Road in Pelham Bay Park. The gardens and grounds are open daily from 8:30 a.m. to dusk. For more information about Bartow-Pell, visit www.bpmm. org. The careful needlework and watercolor creations on display in the exhibit provide a glimpse of schoolgirls’ concerns in the years spanning from 1800 to 1820. In top photo, BPMM education director Margaret Highland discusses the exhibit. At left, framed allegorical embroideries like this one are typical of the striking work accomplished by the young artists. Image courtesy BPMM.
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