James A. Michener Art Museum

Ethel Wallace: Modern Rebel

Through March 10

Ethel Wallace: Modern Rebel revisits the work of a little known, locally beloved artist whose adaptation of batik, a Javanese technique of dyeing cloth, made her work a coveted modernist trend among New York’s elite in the 1910s and ‘20s. Wallace’s story spans decades of culturally transformative eras in United States history, including first-wave feminism, the Roaring Twenties, the World Wars, and the Great Depression. Featuring batik “paintings,” garments, oil paintings, and archival ephemera, this exhibition is the first public display of her work in decades and the first ever solo exhibition of hers to be held at a museum.

Curated by Tara Kaufman, Associate Curator of Clothing and Textiles at History Colorado

Unknown photographer, Ethel Wallace modeling a batik robe, ca. 1920. Collection of the late Kristina Barbara Johnson, courtesy of Jeniah Johnson

Location:

138 S. Pine Street

Doyelstown, PA 18901

Contact:

Laura Igoe, Gerry and Marguerite Lenfest Chief Curator