Women, Art, and Social Change: The Newcomb Pottery Enterprise

July 29–November 6, 2016 - This exhibition is the largest presentation of Newcomb arts and crafts in more than twenty-five years and offers new insights into the Newcomb community’s enduring mark on American art and industry. With 180 objects that span 45 years of production, the exhibition examines the role that the Newcomb school played in promoting art for the advancement of women and, in turn, New Orleans’ business and cultural communities, which were still struggling from the effects of the Civil War. What began as an educational experiment in 1895 at the Newcomb College, Tulane University’s former women’s college, flourished into a quasi-commercial venture that offered an opportunity for Southern women to support themselves financially during and after their training as artists.