The Philadelphia Ten, also known as The Ten, was a group of American female artists who exhibited together from 1917 to 1945. The group, eventually numbering 30 painters and sculptors, exhibited annually in Philadelphia and later had traveling exhibitions at museums throughout the East Coast and the Midwest.[1][2]
Purpose
The Philadelphia Ten was formed to help women who wanted to move beyond the role of hobbyists, as they were commonly viewed in the early 20th century, to be accepted as professional artists.[3] For example, one of the objectives of the group was to give women the ability to control how their work was exhibited. They could limit the number of participants in shows and allow each one to exhibit a larger number of pieces than was typically possible in a juried competition.[4][5]
In addition, the group provided a supportive environment for their creativity, with discussion forums, access to models and professional instruction.[1][6][4][3] The lifestyle choices of the members were unusual for the time: many of them never married; others who did marry chose not to have children or kept their maiden names.[5][3] For many of the women, the group became a source of friendships and collegial relationships.[4]
In 1998, in celebration of the school's 150th anniversary, the faculty of the Moore College of Art and Design organized a retrospective of the Philadelphia Ten that traveled to museums throughout the country. The exhibition included 81 paintings and 9 sculptures.[1][8][2][4]
In 2010, Moore College showed archived pieces dating from the 1920s–40s of seven of the first eleven members of The Philadelphia Ten, along with recent works by members of The Other Woman art collective, also formed by former students of the college.[6]
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many local and regional women's art organizations were formed and sponsored exhibitions. The Ladies' Art Association of New York was among the first, followed by The Plastic Club in Philadelphia, the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors in New York, and others. However, the Philadelphia Ten is recognized as being the group that exhibited most widely and for the longest time.[1]
Members
All of the members of the Philadelphia Ten attended art school in Philadelphia.[5] After the original exhibition by 11 painters, the group eventually grew to include 23 painters and 7 sculptors.[1] The artists were generally not on the cutting edge of modernism, and they are not well-represented in museum collections.[3] However, their work was well-received during the 1920s and 1930s, when painters like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse were not yet popular in the United States.[4]
^ abcdClose, Cynthia (July–August 2021). "The Philadelphia Ten". Artists Magazine. 38 (4). Golden Peak Media: 50–57. An early 20th-century women's art collective empowered its members not only to make art but to make a career of it, too.
^ abcdefgTappert, Tara (October 1999). "Review: Commemorating the Philadelphia Ten: The Philadelphia Ten: A Women's Artist Group 1917–1945 by Page Talbott; Patricia Tanis Sydney". American Studies International. 37 (3): 107–110. JSTOR41279715.
