Massachusetts Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts upcoming events

SOLD OUT: Two Tours: Leilah Babirye & Cynthia Daignault (6 Nov 2026)

Fri, 06 Nov 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Join MA-NMWA for two special tours at the ICA, led by Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs.

Leilah Babirye: Embaga ya Naki ne Naki (Wedding of Naki and Naki): The evocative, adorned sculptures of Leilah Babirye (b. 1985 in Kampala, Uganda) feature the artist’s inventive reuse of debris with her deft carving of wood and work with ceramics. She uses the metal gears and chains of bicycles to create elaborate headdresses and jewelry, and the rubber inner tubes of bicycle tires to form long tresses that mingle with the burnt-black angles of her carved sculptures and the colorful glazes of her bulbous ceramic forms. For the ICA, Babirye premieres a new body of ceramic and wood sculptures inspired by the idea of the queer wedding. Each sculpture adopts a role—bride, groom, ring bearer, flower girl, bridesmaid, or groomsman—in a vivid installation that is both wedding ceremony and celebration.

Cynthia Daignault: Valley: Baltimore-based artist Cynthia Daignault (b. 1978 in Baltimore) conceives of her work as “long-form painting.” She creates interrelated groupings of impressionistic canvases that are infused with a cinematic sense of narrative unfolding over time.. Throughout, painting is a means to slow down the ceaseless flow of time, to meditate on what to memorialize and remember, and, to capture, according to the artist, “what it means to be alive at a specific moment in time.” For the ICA, Daignault is creating a monumental, multi-panel installation of an iconic image of the American landscape: the view looking up the Merced River through the sheer granite valley to the sky beyond at Yosemite National Park.

Boston Book Art Fair: Join Us! (14 Nov 2026)

Sat, 14 Nov 2026 17:30:00 GMT

Join MA-NMWA as we explore the vast variety of Book Arts at the Boston Book Arts Fair. MA-NMWA is participating in the National Museum of Women in the Arts 2027 Women to Watch: A Book Arts Revolution exhibition. So, let’s learn more about Book Arts!

NMWA is known worldwide for its peerless collection of nearly 1,000 artists’ books, a special collection catalyzed in the 1980s by NMWA curator emerita Krystyna Wasserman. The Book as Art, a landmark exhibition at the museum in 2007, was accompanied by an immensely popular catalogue that sold out two editions (and can now only be purchased pre-owned).

The Boston Art Book Fair is a free, all-ages weekend celebrating art, text, print and the myriad ways artists find expression through—and push the definition of—these Book Arts forms. This much-anticipated annual event invites active engagement, engages all the senses, and has the goal of connecting art with community as broadly as possible. Boston Art Book Fair is presented by Boston Center for the Arts and Boston Art Review.

There is no charge to visit this fair, but please register if you’d like to join our group on Saturday for a self-tour at the Cyclorama, so that we will be on the lookout for you. There will be an optional self-treat lunch to follow.

Maverick Kings (and Queen): Early Registration for MA-NMWA Supporting Members through 11/13 (3 Dec 2026)

Thu, 03 Dec 2026 22:00:00 GMT

Join MA-NMWA on Thursday, December 3 at 5:00pm for a curator led tour at the MFA, Boston, with Rita Freed, Hutchins Fellow at Harvard University, professor of Egyptian and Nubian art at Wellesley College, and Emeritus MFA Egyptian Art curator, of an exhibition that could be called “Maverick Queen.”

“The exhibition is a revelation” - The Boston Globe

Current MA-NMWA Supporting Members will have ten days for early registration for this very special tour, through November 13, after which registration will be open to everyone. Join us after the tour for a self-treat cocktail, appetizer or an early dinner at the MFA.

“Maverick Kings,” the brainchild of the MFA’s longtime Egyptian curator, Lawrence Berman, looks past the obvious history, going deeper to explore a culturally rich moment when art in the Egyptian Kingdom, fertile with relative peace, truly thrived.

This flourishing began not with a king at all, but with a queen: Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt from 1473 to 1458 BCE. “King” in this case is semantic, as Berman points out in an essay in the MFA’s recent book “Faces of Ancient Egypt,” that there was no word in Ancient Egyptian for “queen.” But rule Hatshepsut did, and with a priority on provocative and innovative styles that are now emblems of ancient Egyptian art more broadly.

One of the very first Egyptian objects to arrive in North America, in 1835, was a fragment from one of Hatshepsut's fallen granite obelisks at Karnak, recovered by the Bostonian John Lowell Jr. on a trip up the Nile that year.

Hatshepsut’s rule was marked by a keen interest in artistic and cultural innovation. She was a builder, and the first great one of her time. The vast temple at Karnak, Egypt’s grandest and most expansive, grew massively during her reign. The great complexes of Luxor were begun by her too, starting the transformation of Thebes, the capital, into a ritual landscape.

There will be a self-treat dinner at the MFA following the tour, for those members who are interested.