National Museum of Women in the Arts

With a mission to redefine traditional art history, and the world’s only museum devoted entirely to the art of women, the NMWA has a collection of more than 4,500 works by more than 1,000 artists from the 16th century to the present. Highlights include Renaissance artist Lavinia Fontana’s dynamic Holy Family with St John and Frida Kahlo’s defiant 1937 self-portrait Between the Curtains. Other artists represented include Elisabetta Sirani, Alma Thomas, Barbara Hepworth and Louise Bourgeois. There are also special collections of 17th-century botanical prints by Sibylla Merian and works by British and Irish women silversmiths from the 17th to 19th centuries. Though it was founded in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay, the museum didn’t occupy its current 70,000sq ft Renaissance Revival building (by Waddy Butler Wood) until six years later. Special exhibitions feature women’s work from around the world.