Uploaded October 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Explore Mary Cassatt’s life and work, from her contributions to the French Impressionist movement to her bold experimentation in painting, pastels, and printmaking. Through interviews with experts, archival footage and photography, and unpublished letters from the artist, step into the revolutionary world of Cassatt.

Learn more about the exhibition and plan your visit here: famsf.org/exhibitions/mary-cassatt

Shop the exhibition catalogue and collection here: shop.famsf.org/collections/mary-cassatt-at-work

Subscribe to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco: youtube.com/@FAMSF?sub_confirmation=1

About the exhibition:
Too often dismissed as a sentimental painter of mothers and children, Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) was in fact a modernist pioneer. Her paintings, pastels, and prints are characterized by restless experimentation and change. Cassatt was the only American to join the French Impressionists, first exhibiting with the group at Degas’s invitation in 1879, and quickly emerged as a key member of the movement. Alongside scenes of women at the opera, visiting friends, and taking tea, Cassatt produced many images of “women’s work” — knitting and needlepoint, bathing children, and nursing infants. These images suggest parallels between the work of art making and the work of caregiving. The exhibition calls attention to the artist’s own processes of making — how she used her brush, etching needle, pastel stick, and even fingertips to create radical art under the cover of “feminine” subject matter.

Learn more:
5 Things to Know about Impressionist Mary Cassatt
famsf.org/stories/5-things-to-know-impressionist-mary-cassatt
Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) was the most celebrated women artist of her time. A committed member of the Impressionist movement, she was an innovative painter, pastelist, and printmaker. Here are 5 things you might not know about this bold, experimental artist.

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