Community

The Committee creates, supports, and actively participates in programs to advance women in the arts and arts education.

Women to Watch

Developed specifically for the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ national and international outreach committees, the Women to Watch exhibition program is designed to increase the visibility of, and critical response to, promising women artists who are deserving of national and international attention. 

For the program an outstanding Massachusetts curator approved by NMWA nominates a short list of artists working within the chosen medium. NMWA’s curator selects a single artist from these nominees for the Women to Watch exhibition in Washington. 

Women to Watch is presented every two to three years. The Massachusetts Committee was represented at the April opening of the 2024 New Worlds exhibit by artist Daniela Rivera and nominating curator Lisa Tung. The 2027 exhibit is titled "A Book Arts Revolution." MA-NMWA's nominated curator is John Buchtel, Curator of Rare Books and Head of Special Collections at the Boston Athenaeum. 

Learn more about Women to Watch

Community Profile

Doris Sommer
Ira and Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University
Founder, Cultural Agents 
Member, MA-NMWA Advisory Council

Doris Sommer is not interested in accolades. She is not interested in talking about her degrees (PhD, Rutgers) or her appointments [MA-NMWA congratulates her on the most recent one: being named a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences]. She does not discuss her awards. Rather, the conversation quickly turns to her passion: the arts and humanities as “social resources,” vehicles for personal and collective reflection. Engagement with the arts, she says, is fundamentally democratic, because engagement invites and encourages interaction with multiple points of view. And differences.

 “Many artists go to protest. I go to reflecting and integrating with other people,” says Sommer. “I study aesthetics. I am a professor of romance language (Spanish) and literature. I have seen educational institutions become factories for pessimism, where we teach aggression and competition. Students learn to feel smart when they perceive that others aren’t smart. The result is depression, isolation and anxiety. I am convinced that we can use the arts to change this, to make learning pleasurable. Make school a place to dissipate these tensions.”

 In 2001 Sommer founded Cultural Agents, a Harvard initiative and a non-governmental organization (NGO) dedicated to reviving the civic mission of the humanities. Her inspiration, she relates, was a a long line of creative activists whom she continued to discover, notably in Antanas Mockus, Mayor of Bogotá, Colombia. He counted on artistic interventions to break the cycles of violence and corruption. Sommer’s own “activism” through education was triggered by a student who used an internship in India to create a program aimed at keeping young girls in school. “The dropout rate was very high,” she explains, “because the girls were going to be married off. So who cared if they went to school?” Her student’s solution: a program of afterschool workshops with local artists. And the catch: the girls had to be enrolled students. It worked.

 “Talk about teachers learning from students,” Sommer muses. “That experience put me on the track of Pre-Texts.”

 Pre-Texts is a pedagogy that employs texts as prompts for making art (painting, drawing, acting, singing, dancing, etc.). Participants are given a text and are asked to interpret it, then reflect on their experience. Studies have shown that the Pre-Text classroom experience activates cognitive faculties along with socioemotional health. The personal and collective experience of the students and facilitators transforms difficulties from obstacles into artistic challenges, says Sommer. “When students approach difficulty and uncertainty as artists who dare to manipulate challenging texts,” she wrote in the 2019 anthology International Opportunities in the Arts, “they simultaneously master those texts, gain confidence, and admire the creations of fellow students … we can transform the obligatory hours spent in school into a dynamic investment in civility and academic achievement.” [Editor’s note: Cultural Agents offers a brief but rigorous Pre-Text facilitator training program for K-12 educators in Boston and beyond. For information: https://sites.harvard.edu/cultural-agents/pre-texts/]

Sommer’s involvement with the Massachusetts Committee has roots in her belief that women see and experience the world differently. “Feminist theorists point to the fact that women have double vision,” she notes. “They have awareness of their own perspective and the hegemonic [dominant, male-oriented] perspective. Multiple perspectives are invaluable.” And fundamentally democratic.

Read more Community Profiles

Education Outreach

Older Adults

In keeping with NMWA’s mission to champion women through the arts, the Massachusetts Committee (MA-NMWA) reaches out to the broadest possible community to advocate for the importance of women artists and their work. In the past MA-NMWA has organized programming for high school students in collaboration with MassArt's Artward Bound and, in 2024, began a collaboration with Goddard House, a 175-year-old not-for-profit senior living organization and an award-winning leader in creative aging.

Creative Aging Connections (CAC), a Goddard House Initiative (formerly known as Goddard House Community Initiatives) is an innovator of inclusive, community-based creative expression programs for under-resourced older adults across Boston, fostering creativity, social connection, and well-being through intergenerational programs led by professional teaching artists. There visual artist and MA-NMWA Committee member Silvina Ibanez teaches various art techniques to small groups. To complement their experience, she references art history and historical works.

In December 2024 Silvina took this a step further, visiting the Boston Athenaeum with CAC older adult artists who had been learning about the painting style of the women artists of the Boston school. And, in July 2025 she brought the group to the Harvard Art Museums for a private viewing of selected works of painter and printmaker Corita Kent. The participants already have made (and will continue to make) art themselves and they have been especially interested to study the works of others whose messages of social justice are deeply meaningful to them. The curator remarked that he had not found another such engaged group nor enjoyed such meaningful conversation with other visitors!

These collaborations are deeply beneficial on many levels. The experience of making and studying art enhances lives of program participants, opening new doors of inquiry and understanding to individuals who might never otherwise have such opportunities. They bring new audiences to the institutions that participants visit. And, they support CAC’s mission to advance the proven benefits of creative engagement—a goal that MA-NMWA shares. We thank the Athenaeum and Harvard Art Museums for their support.

Program participants at the Boston Athenaeum

K-12 Students

MA-NMWA partners with Artward Bound, the nation's first four-year, arts-centric college prep program, to offer high school students unique programs inspired by local events.

In late 2022 MA-NMWA hosted the students at an interactive workshop, led by an MA-NMWA Committee member, on Surrealist concept and techniques inspired by the “New Worlds: Women to Watch 24" theme. Students then enjoyed a private visit to the Massachusetts exhibition, where the artists were present to discuss their work and answer questions. We hope to continue this tradition with the upcoming 2027 Women to Watch.

This program was made possible with support from Boston Cultural Council and Reopen Creative Boston grants.

Sponsored Tickets

MA-NMWA provides tickets for students based in Massachusetts to attend selected MA-NMWA events free of charge with member registration.

Partnerships and Collaborations

The Massachusetts Committee has sought out alliances with other cultural entities that work with us to support and promote the work of women artists. The list below includes many of these alliances.

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery*
Addison Gallery of American Art*
City of Boston Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture
Boston Athenaeum*
Boston Ballet*
Boston College McMullen Museum of Art*
Boston Cultural Council
Boston Public Art Triennial (formerly Now + There)
Boston Society for Architecture, Women in Design*
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Cape Ann Museum*
Cape Cod Museum of Art*
Childs Gallery*
Concord Museum*
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Art Collection*
Danforth Art Museum*
Davis Museum at Wellesley College*
deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum*
DeDee Shattuck Gallery*
Fitchburg Art Museum*
Friends of the Public Garden*
Fruitlands Museum*
Fuller Craft Museum*
Gallery Kayafas*
Goddard House
Griffin Museum of Photography
Harvard Art Museums*
Harvard Business School*
Huntington Theatre Company*
ICA Watershed*
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston*
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum*
Krakow Witkin Gallery*
Mass Cultural Council
MassArt Art Museum*
MIT Media Lab*
MIT Museum*
Montserrat College of Art*
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston*
National Heritage Museum*
New Bedford Art Museum*
New England Watercolor Society*
Nichols House Museum*
North Bennet Street School*
Northeastern University*
Orchard House*
Peabody Essex Museum*
Praise Shadows Art Gallery*
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University*
Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy*
Schlesinger Library, Harvard Radcliffe Institute*
School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University*
Trustman Art Gallery, Simmons University*
Skinner, Inc.*
Smith College Art Museum*
Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities*
Society of Arts + Crafts Boston*
Tufts University Art Gallery*
Vose Galleries*
Worcester Museum of Art*

*Indicates a venue where MA-NMWA has held events