How One Woman’s Art Museum Unifies People Over Beauty, Not Politics

“In my view — call it contrary or politically incorrect or simply dated if you like — art is about beauty,” Wilhelmina Holladay wrote in her 2008 memoir, “A Museum of Their Own, National Museum of Women in the Arts.” “Art reflects our shared humanity, the traits, talents, and qualities that make us human. Art transcends politics, gender, color, religion, age, and nationality. Art is the great unifier.”

The founder of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), Holladay died in 2021 at the age of 98. Her centenary birthday this month presents the opportunity to celebrate her creation, an institution that champions the art of women. Not liberal or conservative women, or those who aligned with her particular politics or values. The National Museum of Women in the Arts was created to celebrate the art of all women.

The Washington, D.C., museum, which is closed for renovation until fall 2023, began in the early 1980s in Holladay and her husband Wallace’s Georgetown apartment. Visitors toured the couple’s private art collection and attended occasional lectures.    

“The Women’s Museum — as we often called it informally, had become the cause that I would devote my life to,” Holladay wrote. “I had no intention of being distracted from that cause or allowing the Museum itself to be dragged into any political arena unnecessarily. On the contrary, I intended the Museum to welcome all comers, to be a uniting, cohesive, all-embracing organization, an umbrella for all.”

Art as a Unifier

This “arms open to all” approach is exactly what makes Holladay’s achievement so extraordinary. Especially in Washington, D.C., a town steeped in political perspective, where everyone seems to have an ideological agenda — hidden or otherwise.

True to her word, Holladay welcomed dignitaries from both sides of the aisle to the official ribbon-cutting ceremony at the museum’s new permanent home at 1250 New York Avenue. Effi Barry, wife of then-democratic mayor Marion Barry, and Barbara Bush, wife of then-vice president George Bush, both gave ceremonial speeches at the 1987 opening.  

 “The museum will enrich our city, our nation, and the lives of Americans for generations to come,” Mrs. Bush explained. “God bless the National Museum of Women in the Arts.”

Birth of an Idea

That ceremony punctuated the end of a long journey. Wilhelmina Cole moved to Washington in 1946 after graduating from Elmira College to work as social secretary to Soong Meling, wife of Chang Kai-shek. There she met Wallace Holladay, an architect. The couple soon married. They had many shared interests, including travel, an appreciation of food and flowers, and a passionate love of art. Like me, that passion was ignited by volunteering as a docent at The National Gallery of Art. It was during that time that she and her husband started collecting paintings.

After a trip to Europe, the Holladays returned home in search of information about the 17th-century Flemish artist Clara Peeters. Unable to find any, an idea was born: They would specialize in