Philanthropic and Nonprofit Studies
1 total work
The women's arts clubs that flourished during the Progressive Era played a major role in the emergence of middle-brow culture in America. Although nineteenth-century women were expected to learn enough about the arts to amuse and edify their families, they were excluded from professional circles. The voluntary arts associations gave women artists an opportunity to assume a more active role in cultural life and a forum for extending their domestic support of the arts into the public sphere. The Torchbearers shows that these clubs were more than havens for artistic dilettantes. As advocacy groups they effectively promoted universal access to the fine arts, leaving a vital legacy of cultural programs and institutions.