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Our Women to Watch 2027 Book Arts presentation with curator Anthea Black was a season highlight. We’re pleased to share this thoughtful review from Grace DeWitt, Associate Curator for Special Projects at NMWA.

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​Dear SFA Leadership,

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I do not envy our curators for the extremely difficult task they have ahead... what an absolutely incredible cohort of book artists you have brought to the museum through their nomination to Women to Watch 2027: A Book Arts Revolution.

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Anthea is an exemplary consulting curator: their methodology of consulting the community for this shortlist, as well as their sheer care for the democracy, sensoria, and humanizing properties of book arts, are true gifts to this project.

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I want to also celebrate Anthea's thoughtful positioning of book arts in the history of feminism. As they mentioned, “As soon as women gained access to equipment... they were making books!” Indeed, this is a critical reason why our museum is one of the preeminent collections of artists’ books in the world... women were using creative interpretations of the book to concretize, share, exchange, and validate their own ideas far before culture or art economies would.

 

Thank you for once again exalting the goals of our museum through your programming and partnership. NMWA, and the Bay Area creative community, are lucky to know SFA's spirit of advocacy.

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Warmly,
Grace ​

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Watch the Presentation

View Anthea Black’s Women to Watch 2027 Book Arts Presentation →

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Saratoga Art Excursion — September 24, 2025
Our fall season opened with an exceptional day in Saratoga. Members gathered at the home of Wanda Kownacki for pastries, conversation, and an intimate tour of her extraordinary collection featuring works by Marina Abramović, Kiki Smith, Yayoi Kusama, and other groundbreaking women artists. The group then enjoyed a private tour at Montalvo Arts Center, where curator Kelly Sicat led us through the exhibition When the World Is Beautifully Strange. A relaxed outdoor lunch with Lucas Artists Fellows offered a rare chance to speak directly with working artists about their creative processes. 

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Manet & Morisot at the Legion of Honor — October 28, 2025
Members were treated to a private tour of Manet and Morisot with Chief Curator Dr. Emily Beeny, whose insight, humor, and depth of knowledge made the exhibition come alive. Her discussion of Morisot’s boldness, experimentation, and lasting influence created a shared sense of discovery among attendees. Lunch afterward at the Legion Café continued the lively conversation. Events like this are a wonderful way to learn together and to see with fresh eyes.

Cocktails & Conversation with Mary Ceruti — November 12, 2025
An evening at the home of Robin Wright brought members together for a warm and thought-provoking conversation with Daisy Nam (Wattis Institute) and Mary Ceruti (Walker Art Center). Their reflections on artist support, institutional evolution, and the Bay Area’s creative ecosystem sparked rich dialogue among members and guests. Robin also shared updates on her vision for the 2027 Further Triennial. With beautiful art, generous hosting, and dynamic conversation, it was the kind of gathering that reminds us why SFA’s community is so special.

​Mary Lou Dauray

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Many have asked Mary Lou Dauray, “When did you realize you were an artist?” Her answer to that question is that she did not recognize her vocation until well into her fourth decade—after spending years weaving creativity and art making into nearly every part of her life.

Growing up in the 1950s, she vividly remembers her father holding woolen skeins of yarn over a steaming kitchen kettle, the air thick with the unmistakable scent of lanolin. He and her uncle, partners in a textile business in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, experimented with combining metallic lurex threads into yarn—a way to bring shimmer to sweaters—and even worked with a synthetic yarn called Ban-Lon, helping introduce a new chemically based fiber into the textile world. When the textile industry moved south, her father shifted to designing and hand-printing silk-screened patterns on linen kitchen towels—another innovative first. Today, versions of those towels appear in souvenir shops around the globe. Her mother, equally creative, spent hours crafting small scenic dioramas. Creativity truly permeated Mary Lou’s household.

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A few years later, Mary Lou brought that same creative spirit into a home filled with four active children. She held art classes at the house and maintained a kitchen table perpetually covered in flour-based playdough, papier-mâché, and paint. Alongside raising her family, she ran an interior design business, helping clients solve décor challenges with imaginative solutions.

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Gradually, Mary Lou devoted more of her energy to her own paintings, merging her artistic voice with her deep concerns about climate destruction and the environmental threats facing our planet. For nearly 20 years, she created several themed series aimed at raising awareness. Her first focused on the melting of ice as global temperatures rose. She then explored the dangers of coal burning and transport. After visiting Holocaust sites in Europe, she created a series of haunting female portraits. Later, she turned to nuclear dangers, influenced by the catastrophic Fukushima Daiichi meltdown in Japan. Another series celebrated the beauty of America’s national parks—places whose pristine landscapes are increasingly vulnerable.

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More recently, she has completed more than 50 artworks inspired by the idea that art can help heal trauma. She is developing a booklet highlighting these pieces. In October 2026, several of her works addressing nuclear issues will be exhibited at the Sausalito Library in California. She hopes to use the opening event to bring together speakers and spark public conversation about nuclear weaponry and the growing reliance on nuclear power.

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Mary Lou’s awareness of the lack of recognition given to women artists began in 2014, after seeing Elles at the Pompidou in Paris—a landmark exhibition featuring more than 130 artworks by 75 women artists from 1909 to 2007. That same year, she and her always supportive husband helped fund an innovative program at the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach, Florida, titled RAW (Recognizing the Art of Women). Around that time, Mary Lou also began her long-term support of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. More recently, she and her husband support a program initiated at the Davis School of Gerontology at USC, the AHA (Art and Healthy Aging) Center which will assist research and further insight into the interplay between artistic engagement and the aging process.

To explore Mary Lou’s artwork and writing, please visit her website: www.maryloudauray.com. asked Mary Lou

Exhibitions

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Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Multiple Offerings | BAMPFA | January 24–April 26, 2026

Exhibitions

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Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Multiple Offerings | BAMPFA | January 24–April 26, 2026

1. Maria Schalcken, Self-Portrait in Her Studio, ca. 1680. Oil on panel. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Donation of Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, in support of The Center for Netherlandish Art, inv. 2019.2094.
   Photographer: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

2. Still from “The Book as Art: Modern and Contemporary Women Artists to Know,” Anthea Black, 2024.
   Source: Screen capture from Anthea Black’s YouTube presentation.

3. Group portrait of Women to Watch 2027 Bay Area nominees.
   Photographer: Drew Altizer Photography.
   Courtesy: SFA NMWA.

4. In Case You Missed It
   Photographer: Lisa Lubliner / SFA NMWA.

5. Member Spotlight — Mary Lou Dauray.
   Photographer: Courtesy of the member