Nine Women Artists

Nine Women Artists is showing at the Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave, through February 21, 2027. The exhibition centers on 9 Portraits, a 2019 painting by Katherine Ace that brings together nine Northwest artists in a single group portrait. Ace first showed the work in its early stages in her studio back in 2015, when photographer K.B. Dixon shot her for the project Face to Face: 32 Oregon Artists. Ace passed away in 2023, and this show keeps that painting at the center of the conversation.

Ace conceived 9 Portraits as a direct response to Henri Fantin-Latour's A Studio at Les Batignolles (1870), which gathered a group of male artists. Instead of formal posing, she asked her subjects to dress in their studio and work clothes. The nine women in the painting are all mature artists with a significant presence in the Northwest, and their styles range from representation to abstraction. They've all built long careers right here in Portland.

Ace spoke plainly about why she brought them together. She noted that they "have tenacity, have lived through sexist decades, told they couldn't really be artists — only fit for sleeping with the professor, expected to subvert themselves to male artist machismo."

Alongside 9 Portraits, the exhibition features work by the nine artists depicted in it: Laura Ross-Paul, Katherine Ace herself in a self-portrait, Mary Josephson, Judy Cooke, Phyllis Yes, Sharon Bronzan, Shu-Ju Wang, Lucinda Parker, and Sherrie Wolf. Photographer K.B. Dixon, who shot all but one of the artists, is an award-winning author whose work has appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, and journals. Admission is included with general admission to the museum.