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Becker GallerySelected Works
Statuette of Athena Parthenos, 450–400 BCE, marble. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. John Mead Howells, 1960.48
Denarius of Porcius Laeca, 110–109 BCE, silver. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Mark M. Salton, 1989.58.59
The Reconciliation between Britannia and her daughter America, 1782, etching, by William Humphrey. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Gift of Miss Susan Dwight Bliss, 1963.354
Study for Pallas Athena, ca. 1893, pencil on tracing paper, by John LaFarge. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Museum Purchase, Laura T. and John H. Halford Jr. Acquisition Fund, 2022.4.
On the Armistice Medal, ’18, 1918, bronze by Charles L. Doman. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Mark M. Salton, 1978.32.22.a
Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn, photograph, 1938, by Ellen Auerback. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Gift, Joe Baio Collection of Photography, 2018.43.2
About
This exhibition explores female personifications of the nation state from antiquity through the Enlightenment to today. Through art, figures such as Athena, Roma, Columbia, and Britannia have become deeply embedded in Western cultural history. The adoption and use of these figures raise critical questions: Why did the patriarchal power structures of the Western nation state manifest as female forms, and how have women embodied and perpetuated the complex and often conflicting themes of liberty, justice, imperialism, and nationalism? By investigating how female personifications of the state have simultaneously defined and called into question Western cultural values, Empires of Liberty illustrates how the woman became the nation.
The exhibition is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Endowment.