History pop quiz:

Can you name the leader of the largest pirate fleet in history? Who was the first person to fly solo, non-stop, from England to North America, a more difficult trip than Charles Lindbergh’s eastbound flight? What about the youngest playwright to win a New York Drama Critics’ Circle award, or the author of the first English language autobiography?

The feats themselves may be entirely unknown to you, and the commonality between each may surprise you: All of these individuals were women.

No, it isn’t Women’s History Month. Not yet.

The message behind artist and illustrator Anita Kunz’s “Original Sisters” painting series, a selection of which will be on view at the Norman Rockwell Museum beginning November 9, is evergreen. In some respects, it’s not a message at all. It’s a cavalcade.

“Original Sisters” is a growing collection of over 450 acrylic portraits of women both historical and contemporary, spanning continents and cultures, traversing industries and interests. Well-known American pioneers such as Sojourner Truth and Gloria Steinem are nestled amongst dozens of unknown, unsung, or forgotten women who have made lasting contributions to global society.

The paintings are similarly scaled, composed, painted, and installed. Because of this, the exhibition and concept may seem easy to minimize, the way a Zen garden may look like a simple arrangement of sand, rocks, and plants. But what Kunz has achieved — due in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic, which provided her with the time and space to begin this project — is, in fact, a broad yet remarkably deep anthropological study of women: who they are, how they persevere, and what they can accomplish.

“It’s a collection of really great stories,” Kunz explains from her home in Toronto. “I’m thinking about lost history. I started researching some women [during the pandemic] and I started realizing that these should be household names.”

Each painting is accompanied by a roughly 100-word profile that Kunz also wrote. These truncated biographies are perfect portals into imagination. Longer than a tweet but shorter than a Wikipedia page, they tell the bold, innovative, and/or creative story of the nearly life-sized portrait above it. Rendered with delicate hatching, flat color, symbolism, and unique typography (the subject’s name is often their replicated signature), the artworks have an even greater power individually; they pridefully demand to be seen.

While women’s accomplishments today are more conspicuous than ever, sexism continues to be prevalent. “Nine out of 10 people still have a bias against women,” Kunz says, citing the UN Development Programme’s June 2023 Gender Social Norms Index report. “That’s a sobering statistic.”

According to the report, only 27 percent of respondents worldwide believed that women having the same rights as men is essential for democracy. Nearly half believed that men make better political leaders than women do, and 43 percent believed that men make better business executives than women do.

Kunz, who studied commercial arts in the mid-1970s at the Ontario College of Art (OCAD) in Toronto, used her connections with male teachers and art directors to build an incredibly successful career in editorial illustration. Her paintings graced the covers of Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Time, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Variety, and The New York Times Magazine, among others. But the pace of production and increased editorial control over content left her feeling creatively depleted.

“I started doing my own work on the side — big paintings — thinking about where I came from in art school,” she says. “I didn’t have any female teachers. I went to workshops [led by] the top people, but it was sadly lacking any women. We didn’t have any art history [at OCAD], so I never learned about female artists.”

Kunz’s digital excavation allowed her to unearth remarkable women artists unfamiliar to her but also largely absent from our culture, a canon that includes Camille Claudel, a talented sculptor overshadowed by Auguste Rodin; Margaret Keane, the painter of big-eyed portraits whose husband claimed were his own; Augusta Savage, a sculptor who struggled against racism and financial hardship; Ethel Reed, an influential yet tragic poster designer and illustrator; and Rose O’Neill, the first published female American cartoonist and, at one time, the highest-paid female illustrator in the world.

The setting of this exhibition, the Berkshires’ Norman Rockwell Museum, is fitting in so many ways, not the least of which is its executive leadership. Gender parity of museum boards and directors is improving, according to a new report by the American Alliance of Museums, but larger museums are 38 percent less likely to have women directors.

Helmed for nearly 40 years by Laurie Norton Moffatt, Norman Rockwell Museum continues to buck this trend. However, the longtime director points to her mentors — Lila Berle, Jane Fitzpatrick, Polly Pierce, and the museum’s founders — as essential in paving her way, as well as the many women cultural leaders active long before her.

“I think of Amy Bess Miller establishing Hancock Shaker Village followed by [its] recent female leaders; Berkshire Museum’s first director, Laura Bragg; Gertrude Robinson Smith, early founder of Tanglewood; Margaret French Crescent, founder of Chesterwood; and my many contemporary colleagues,” she says.

The museum’s practice of not only exhibiting hundreds of women illustrators but collecting their work is also a testament of its dedication to “Original Sisters” and its mission.

“Rose O’Neill is very prominent in our collection,” says Jane Dini, Curator of Exhibitions. “We are an active collecting institution, and we very much seek all types of illustration.” Among its new additions are 42 illustrations by Kunz and three Berkshire sisters — Elizabeth Freeman, Edith Wharton, and Shannon Holsey, President of the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohican Indians — commissioned in the style of “Original Sisters,” all donated by Kunz herself.

Perhaps the most moving aspect of the exhibition is the feeling of wanting to capture the stories of your remarkable women or, for me, envisioning the portraits and profiles of just a fraction of the four billion women living, innovating, nurturing, creating, saving, attempting, and inspiring right now, this very moment.

“I think the exercise is really quite poignant and remarkable, and something we should all reflect on,” says Dini. “How we engage our own histories.”

By Julia Dixon
October 23, 2024

Anita Kunz: Original Sisters: Portraits of Tenacity and Courage
November 9, 2024 through May 26, 2025
Norman Rockwell Musuem
Stockbridge, MA