"A woman should be someone, not something"

Cassatt is largely known today as the 19^th-century American artist who, living in Paris as an expatriate, managed to launch her career with the most radical art movement of that time: Impressionism. What is less known is that Cassatt created new art styles of her own after the Impressionist group exhibitions ended—art that used new methods of printmaking inspired by Japanese techniques. In addition, her huge mural "Modern Woman," which was displayed at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, connected her to the political and social women's movements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  We will examine Cassatt's art, asking in what ways her portrayals of women were not only innovative but radical and how she worked the existing social systems to become "someone, and not something."