"Dear Louie:" Louisine Waldron Elder Havemeyer, Impressionist Art Collector and Woman Suffrage Activist

Abstract Louisine Waldron Elder Havemeyer's personal evolution from an elite, reserved, art-collecting wife of an American Gilded Age industrialist to an engaged, unapologetically outspoken activist on behalf of all women's right to vote is emblematic of the myriad ways women moved out into the world from their domestic spheres in the early twentieth century, harnessing the increasing power of collective visual protest as a peaceful, non-violent tactic to demand justice and a voice.Her 1915 suffrage exhibit held at the Knoedler Gallery in New York City may be a modest moment of microhistory in the larger context of the histories of both art collecting and the American women's suffrage movement, but it is an illuminating look at the evolution of a single wife and mother's belief in the transformative and performative power of artistic and political sisterhood.