A special exhibit of Mary Cassatt, an American artist known for her involvement in the Impressionism movement, is on display starting this week at the Honolulu Museum of Art.
The exhibit runs June 21 through Oct. 12. It is included in regular admission for HoMA, which is $15 for kamaʻāina and free for keiki 18 years old or younger.
“I feel like some people might find it kind of incongruous why we have Mary Cassatt in Honolulu,” Alejandra Rojas Silva, HoMA’s curator of European and American art, told Aloha State Daily. “But I actually think it makes a lot of sense.”
HoMA, was founded by Anna Rice Cooke, who counted a print from Cassatt among her personal collection, which started the museum, "so she has always been part of HoMA,” Silva said.
Impressionism developed in France in the 19th century and is characterized by paintings of landscapes and daily life, which were done "on the spot," rather than in a studio. Cassatt grew up in Philadelphia, but eventually left home for Paris, where she was one of just three women — and the only American — to show with the Impressionists.
The special exhibit, called “Mary Cassatt at Work,” includes 35 pieces of art, including 22 pieces of art work on loan from the Philedelphia Museum of Art. HoMA is contributing an additional eight works by Cassatt. This exhibit will also include five works from HoMA’s Japanese print collection.
Cassatt produced art in a variety of mediums, including pastels and oils. She also mastered printmaking techniques.
“One of the exciting things about having Mary Cassatt here in in Honolulu is that in 1890, Mary Cassatt saw a show of Japanese works at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and she was so mesmerized by Japanese wood blocks that she then went ahead and created her version of that in copper plate. It really changed the way Mary Cassatt worked, as well as Western printmaking in general,” Silva said. “Because we have such an amazing collection of Japanese prints — we have the third biggest collection of Japanese prints outside of Japan — we thought bringing Mary Cassatt here was also a great opportunity to highlight the depth of our Japanese collection, but also the cross-cultural interest that Mary Cassatt had in her practice.”
The visiting works of art were previously featured in an exhibit at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. To get to Oʻahu, the artwork traveled about 2,390 miles, much of which was across the Pacific Ocean. Each piece was packed into custom crates and kept in air conditioned spaces. Once the artwork arrived, it had to sit for at least 24 hours to acclimate before they could be unboxed, Silva said.
Central to Cassatt’s art, is the focus on the interior life of women and children, she said.
“She shows them, not just as an object to be seen, but as humans impacting the world,” Silva said. “And she's showing the labor involved in caregiving, but also a lot of her subjects are reading, looking at a map, literally working, carrying a child, sewing, playing instruments. She's not just talking about her life as a professional artist — and the amount of labor involved in the artwork that we see — but also the work of being a human in the world, including being a woman in the world.”
Katie Helland can be reached at katie@alohastatedaily.com.
