The Winter Art Show

In Streetlight 1930 by Constance Coleman Richardson (right), the place is Indianapolis and the time a summer night: a mother is taking her children for a walk after dinner. Almost obliterated by trees in full leaf, a streetlight casts long blue shadows worthy of Magritte, and a man’s cigarette glows in the dusk. Although she was reasonably successful during the 1930s and 1940s, today Constance Richardson is all but forgotten. Her painting was hung this year in the inaugural exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.—an example of the kind of work the new museum hopes to make better known.