“The Sky’s the Limit.”
That was the title of a featured exhibit when the National Museum of Women in the Arts reopened in 2023 after a long renovation. Fine. Aspirational, if a bit on the nose.
But the reality is less neat. Women are no longer shut out of the art world. But they’re still underrepresented almost everywhere you look: museum walls, auction prices, major collections, gallery representation.
Which is exactly why a place like this matters. It’s not just filling gaps. It’s correcting a long-standing gender imbalance that never really went away.
Here’s how to visit the museum and what not to miss.
Women in the Arts: Overview & What To See
Quick Tips
Here’s the museum layout:
- Ground Floor: tickets, collection highlights, long gallery, museum shop
- Mezzanine: collection highlights
- 2nd Floor: temporary exhibitions
- 3rd Floor: collection highlights, homemaker section
- 4th Floor: temporary exhibitions, library
Other Things To Know:
- Tickets: $16
- Plan to spend 1-2 hours.
- The museum is fully accessible.
- Art is displayed by theme, not chronologically. I found this a bit unusual myself because you’ll see works from the 16th century and works from the 21st century side by side.
- Head to the museum shop to browse books, apparel, jewelry, and other gift items.
Mini History & Architecture
The six story building itself merits a visit. It was built in 1908 as a headquarters for the Freemasons.
At the time, it was a mens only group. Women weren’t allowed.
Which is one reason why the museum founders picked it. It flips the original meaning of the building.
Designed by Waddy B. Wood, it’s a Renaissance Revival building with the feel of a Greek temple.
It has a symmetrical, formal facade and big arched windows. It’s meant to look imposing and orderly, giving it a “civic grandeur” feel.
You’ll step into a very theatrical entrance with a grand marble staircase. There’s a Great Hall with high ceilings and chandeliers and a decided ceremonial vibe. Then, there’s a mix of large, formal rooms and smaller galleries.
The founders bought the property in 1983, and it opened as a museum in 1987. The museum recently underwent a massive interior renovation to the tune of $70 million and reopened in 2023.
The renovation added 4,500 feet of gallery space, and traded a “rabbit warren” of galleries for long sight lines.
It was the world’s first museum dedicated entirely to female artists. The collection consists of over 6,000 artworks, spanning the 16th century to present day.
Key Works, Permanent Collection
Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky
This Kahlo self-portrait is probably the most recognizable work in the collection, and it comes with a backstory that’s hard to ignore. It’s tied to her brief affair with the exiled Soviet revolutionary Leon Trotsky.
In 1937, Trotsky and his wife arrived in Mexico and stayed at Casa Azul. At the time, Rivera had just had an affair with Kahlo’s sister, Cristina.
Kahlo was crushed and her response was calculated. She began an affair with Trotsky, later describing it as a way to give Rivera “a few small nips.”
The painting serves as a kind of record of that episode. Kahlo presented it to Trotsky on November 7, 1937. It was his birthday, and the anniversary of the Russian Revolution.
In it, she’s carefully composed and deliberately elegant, framed by parted white curtains that draw attention to her. The inscription is direct: “To Trotsky, with all my affection.”
Lavinia Fontana, Marriage Portrait of a Bolognese Noblewoman
Lavinia Fontana was a Renaissance–Mannerist painter known for both portraits and large-scale religious works.
She built a serious career. In Bologna, she became the go to portraitist for the upper crust. She was groundbreaking.
No other female artist had made it without the help of a convent or court. For years, she was just another one of the forgotten female artists, but her reputation has been resurrected.
This is one of those portraits where the clothes do most of the talking. Although the sitter’s identity isn’t certain, the sumptuous garnet-colored gown and opulent accessories signal her circumstances. The city’s elite brides typically wore red, so this portrait likely commemorates marriage.
The sitter herself is presented in strict profile, almost like a medal or a coin: controlled, composed, and not especially interested in engaging you.
There’s no softness here. The expression is reserved, slightly distant, as if emotion has been edited out.
Suzanne Valadon, Girl on a Small Wall
For centuries, the females in Western art were shaped by male desire or framed as allegory. Valadon turned this notion on its head, especially with her female nudes.
Her figures are neither idealized nor passive. They feel present, self-possessed, and distinctly individual.
In this painting, you can see that Valadon had no interest in making women look pleasant for the viewer. She flips the usual script. Instead of soft, inviting, or decorative, her figure feels inward, preoccupied, or slightly guarded.
The woman is folded into herself. Arms wrapped around her leg, head tilted down, gaze turned away. She’s not performing. She’s thinking, or just being.
Berthe Morisot, Young Woman in Mauve
Morisot is one of the quieter forces in Impressionism. Closer in spirit to Manet than Renoir.
More restrained, less sugary. And, predictably, she never got the same level of attention as her male peers.
Still, Morisot was central to the movement. She showed in seven of the eight Impressionist exhibitions between 1874 and 1886, which tells you everything about where she stood. Today, she’s grouped with Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt as one of the three “grand dames” of Impressionism.
In this painting, the brushwork is quick and loose, almost offhand. The dress is built up in flickers of lilac and violet, catching that late 19th century obsession with mauve.
That craze started almost by accident. In 1856, a young English chemist stumbled onto the first synthetic purple dye, and suddenly everything—from fashion to painting—shifted toward these new, unstable colors.
Remedios Varo, The Call
Varo moved in Surrealist circles, worked alongside major figures, and still managed to develop a language that was entirely her own. But like a lot of women in that orbit, she was never centered in the story.
Her work is meticulous, almost clinical in its precision. You’ll see alchemy, mysticism, strange apparatuses that feel half-invented, half-discovered.
The women in her paintings aren’t decorative. They’re thinkers and operators, moving through tightly constructed worlds that follow their own internal logic.
In The Call, you see a slender, almost androgynous figure surrounded by objects tied to transformation and ritual. It reads like a self-portrait, even if it isn’t a literal likeness.
The figure is illuminated from within, holding a small vessel, as if she’s been summoned. Or is the one doing the summoning.
It’s less about being seen than being activated.
Niki de Saint Phalle, Pregnant Nana
Saint Phalle isn’t subtle, and she’s not trying to be. Her work is loud, bold, and deliberate.
She’s best known for her “nanas.” They’re large, brightly colored female figures caught mid-motion. The bodies are exaggerated, all hips and breasts, with a sense of constant movement.
At first glance, they read as playful. The colors are bright, almost cheerful. But there’s an edge to them. They push back.
These female figures take up space—physically and conceptually—and make that point without apology.
Joan Mitchell Paintings
Mitchell was one of the groundbreaking artists of the 20th century. She was one of a few female painters among the early Abstract Expressionists, who were an extremely male-dominated group.
She was a remarkable colorist. She gave Abstract Expressionism a lyricism, spareness, and light that weren’t quite natural to it.
Her late works, of which the museum has several, are even more exuberant. Oranges and yellows dominate, suggesting sunflowers.
Mitchell was inspired by nature and her gardens. But she didn’t paint landscapes. She painted her experience of natural beauty.
Alice Bailly, Self-Portrait
Bailly was one of the more radical painters working in Switzerland in the early 20th century. Her Geneva apartment doubled as a salon, drawing artists, writers, and musicians into her orbit.
This self-portrait reflects that mix of influences. It doesn’t sit neatly in one style. The sharp, angular lines of her hands and shoulders lean toward Futurism. The bright, almost clashing color palette nods to Fauvism.
Then there’s the paintbrush and palette. Broken apart and hovering, as if seen from multiple angles at once. That’s straight out of the Cubist playbook.
It’s less a straightforward portrait than a statement of how she worked—pulling from everything around her and refusing to stay in one lane.
Firelie Baz, Exiled Muses
Báez tends to center women, especially those left out of the usual historical narrative. She often looks to Caribbean history, pulling figures back into view and giving them a presence they were never granted.
Here, she turns to Marie-Louise Coidavid, queen of the Kingdom of Haiti, along with her daughters, Améthyste and Athénaïre. The two are shown in imagined portraits, set inside ornate, colonial-style frames that feel deliberately loaded.
As in much of her work, Báez strips away noses and mouths. It’s a pointed choice. Those are the features most often exaggerated or distorted through racial stereotyping, and removing them cuts that off at the source.
The result is both elegant and unsettling. You’re looking at figures who are fully composed, even regal, but also withheld. They resist easy reading, and push back against how women like this have historically been seen.
Practical Information For Visiting
Address: 250 New York Ave NW, Washington, DC
Hours: Tuesday through Sunday: 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. Closed Mondays.
Tickets:
Adults: $16
Seniors (65+) and D.C. residents: $13
Students, educators, military: $13
Under 21: free
Visitors with disabilities: free
Free admission: first Sunday and second Wednesday of each month
Tips:
There’s a coat check, museum shop, and elevators. The docents are knowledgeable and can tell you about the artworks.
Some works have information plaques to read. Others have QR codes for you to scan to listen to a video about the work.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this guide to the National Museum of Women in the Arts. You may find the other DC travel guides useful:
- 2 days in Washington D.C. itinerary
- Best museums in Washington D.C.
- Fall foliage in Washington D.C.
- Guide to the National Mall
- Guide to the Holocaust Museum
- Guide to the National Gallery of Art
- Guide to the National Portrait Gallery
- Guide to the Hirshhorn Museum
- Guide to the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art
- Guide to the Museum of African American History and Culture
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