You can name a woman artist! And you can name a woman artist!

Happy first weekend of Women's History Month! I celebrated the start of what is bound to be a great month re-watching Wonder Woman and making homemade bagels for the first time. A superhero and carbs! I don't know what could be more perfect.

I also spent part of my weekend at the museum. I've been volunteering at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) for almost five years now and have been a docent most of that time. Being a docent is one of the things I'm most proud of doing. It's a lot of work, from writing tours, researching artists, and learning about our special exhibitions, but it's the kind of work that's satisfying. I love spending time at the museum and helping visitors navigate our collection and learn about artists they might otherwise never know. It makes my heart happy.

Last year, the education department (they oversee the docents) created a new tour called "Nasty Women" and debuted it over the weekend of the Women's March. The museum was packed and the tour was wildly popular. Since the introduction of the tour, our educators have refined the content, written a solid script, changed the name to Fierce Women, and trained a group of us docents to the deliver the tour. Since I can't say no to new things, I went through the training and have been delivering the tour for the last few months. I did my third tour this weekend and is was the funnest one yet. The tour is based on the concept of museum hacking, where the normal art museum tour script is flipped. It's fast-paced, high energy, and a more irreverent take on art and artists. There's more storytelling elements in a museum hack tour and is really designed to engage visitors in the museum than a traditional tour.

E.V. Day's G-Force Dive

I am obsessed with giving this tour. Don't get me wrong; I love giving regular highlights tours and special exhibition tours too, but there is something so fun and different about this tour. It's one part art museum tour and one part performance art. Where else would I get to make a Lifetime movie joke in relationship to artist Suzanne Valadon while also referencing Gilmore Girls? Or how about calling myself a feminist killjoy while recounting the magic that was 1990s fashion? In the space of an hour, visitors are moved from learning about the first professional woman artist (Lavinia Fontana) to discussing Virginia Woolf's lady parts, and end with a meditation on what would happen if thongs became sentient and flew off the people wearing them.


One part of me knows the reason I love this tour so much is that people are genuinely interested in the content and participating. We consistently have fifty or more people on each tour and they come back despite the fact that it's the same eight artists each time. It's not uncommon for us to have a group of people waiting outside for us to open just to sign up. They bring their friends, they post on social media, and they ask questions. I've had so many great conversations on these tours and afterward; they want more. One of my group today actually said he wanted the tour to last longer because he was having so much and learning about artists he had never heard of before today. Success! People are more interested in women artists, in feminism, and in representation in museums than ever before. These things matter and if this tour is the reason they come in and the reason they keep coming back, then let's do more.

This month I challenge you to go find some women artists at your favorite art museums. Use the #5womenartists to share their works on social media. Champion women through the arts. Come see our newest exhibition, Women House, opening this Friday.

Coming to the Island in March: A very special shoulder pads/women having it all Lazy Movie Weekend, shenanigans abound at a cat cafe, and I attempt to make croissants from scratch on my own. March is going to be outstanding!