Art to Admire and Inspire

Perhaps the College’s best-known living alumna artist is Katherine Bradford ’64, an award-winning feminist and lesbian painter whose work centers around female figures, reimagining them as superheroes or dreamers. On the occasion of Bradford’s 60th class reunion, Carrie Robbins, M.A. ’08, Ph.D. ’13, curator for art and artifacts in Special Collections, reached out to the artist to inquire about opportunities to improve Bradford’s representation at Bryn Mawr. Bradford and her gallery, Adams and Ollman, responded with generosity, selecting Women Ahead (2022) as a painting particularly fitting for the College, with Bradford describing the figures as “walking forward as if leaning into the future.”

In Women Ahead, Bradford’s gestural application of bright paint provides a color field for contemplating gender, politics, and sexuality, as well as the very nature of paint. In Bradford’s view, the figures improbably balance flamboyance with a demand to be taken seriously.

The painting joins more than 40,000 cataloged works of art or cultural artifacts in Bryn Mawr’s Special Collections, most of which reflect generous donations from our alumnae/i community. While the majority of these reside in storage for ready use in teaching and research, Women Ahead will be displayed long term, joining a growing curatorial effort to exhibit art across campus. Other recent additions include a bequest from former College Treasurer Margaret Healy, Ph.D. ’69, and a gift from Cynthia Lovelace Sears ’59 to provide artwork for a public art loan collection.

Women Ahead is now hanging on the second floor of the Campus Center, where it can inspire current Bryn Mawr students as we light our way into the future — together and with vibrant confidence.

Listen: Katherine Bradford was interviewed on this season’s The Great Women Artists podcast, episode 151: mawr.life/bradford

Photos by Caroline Bittenbender