American Folk Art Museum to Present ‘Locating Girlhood: Place and Identity in Early American Schoolgirl Art’

Exhibition reexamines the artistic production of girls and young women in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America, on view October 9, 2026 through February 28, 2027

New York, NY — September 2026 — The American Folk Art Museum (AFAM) will open Locating Girlhood: Place and Identity in Early American “Schoolgirl” Art on October 9, 2026, with the exhibition on view through February 28, 2027, at 2 Lincoln Square in New York City.

Presented during the nation’s semiquincentennial, Locating Girlhood reexamines the often-overlooked artistic production of girls and young women in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America. The exhibition highlights their sustained engagement with representations of place long before the emergence of more widely recognized traditions of American landscape art. Drawing on loans from institutions and private collections across the United States and Canada, it offers one of the most significant explorations of early American girls’ artistic achievement ever assembled.

Among the works on view is a Needlework Picture [“Fishing Lady” Scene] (Boston, 1747-50), executed in wool, silk, beads, and linen and measuring 21 3/8 by 58 1/4 inches. The piece is held by Historic New England, gifted by Miss Frances Lowell Burnett.

Lead support for Locating Girlhood is provided by Elizabeth and Irwin Warren, the Henry Luce Foundation, and the Historical Society of Early American Decoration. For more information about the exhibition, visit the American Folk Art Museum.