An exhibition opening October 9 at the American Folk Art Museum in Manhattan seeks to broaden the narrative of early American art by recognizing the contributions of young women, including women of color, to the development of landscape art in the United States. Titled “Locating Girlhood: Place and Identity in Early American ‘Schoolgirl’ Art,” the show challenges traditional art histories that have largely centered on white male artists, instead highlighting nearly 100 pieces created by girls and young women from colonial times through the early republic.
The exhibition presents works such as embroidered samplers, needlework pictures, watercolor studies, painted furniture, and stitched maps—forms often dismissed as decorative or “schoolgirl art.” These pieces collectively reveal the sophisticated ways in which young women engaged with American landscapes and their sense of place. The curators argue that these works anticipated later developments in landscape painting while simultaneously reflecting domestic and civic identities.
Among the highlights is an impressive embroidered overmantel piece titled “View of Boston Common,” created around 1750 by 18-year-old Hannah Otis, a member of a prominent anti-royalist family. The work, rendered in wool, silk, metallic thread, and beads on linen, carefully depicts human figures—including a likely enslaved Black groom—amid detailed greenery and wildlife. The piece’s scale and treatment of spatial composition defy earlier assumptions of such needlework as merely delicate or feminine.
Many of the works feature detailed architectural elements and landscapes drawn from the artists’ immediate environments, such as Georgian-style buildings and rural estates, signaling the country’s evolving urban and agricultural identity. For example, 10-year-old Rebecca Carter of Providence, Rhode Island, in 1788 created a sampler depicting the Rhode Island State House combined with natural motifs and an inscription celebrating civic virtue, which also prominently bears her name.
Significantly, the exhibition includes works attributed to young women of color who used the medium of needlework to contest racial stereotypes and assert their humanity and artistic skill. These pieces offered challenges to the historical marginalization and miniaturization of Black figures in art. Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, a University of Pennsylvania art history professor, emphasized that for free Black women, such works represented a claim to middle-class acceptance.
Curators Emelie Gevalt and Caroline Culp emphasize that these signed works provide rare documentation of female identities often erased from historical records, where women were listed primarily in relation to male family members. They reject the notion that these works were mere copies of popular prints or botanical illustrations, highlighting instead their originality and cultural significance.
By the early 19th century, needle arts were integral to female education in “dame academies” and seminaries, intertwined with curricula that included classical languages, sciences, and geography. Mapmaking, taught to young women as both an artistic and intellectual endeavor, enabled them to explore notions of national identity and personal place within the expanding country. The exhibition features examples such as a large “Map of Two Hemispheres” created by 15-year-old Juliana Carpenter of Homer, New York, in 1825, which includes her self-portrait at its center.
“Locating Girlhood” thus reframes early American art history by situating the creative output of young women at its core, illuminating their role in shaping how the American landscape and identity were visualized and understood. The exhibition invites a reassessment of artistry that intertwines personal, political, and geographic narratives from the country’s formative years.