A Cheyney University art teacher is one of the women artists featured in an exhibit “Women in motion: A hundred and fifty years of women’s artistic networks at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts” at PAFA, reports Priyanka Tewari for WHYY.

The exhibit looks at how women artists, known and unknown, supported each other in a male-dominated field, who also had a connection to PAFA in the past 150 years.

Laura Wheeler Waring taught art at Cheyney University after visiting Paris, and was the first African-American woman to receive a Cresson travel fellowship.

Today, one of her descendants is State Rep. Chris Rabb.

“So there’s this really nice, long-living history of these women, these pioneering African American women who studied at PAFA in the early 20th century and still have amazing connections to the City of Philadelphia today,” said exhibit curator Dr. Anna O. Marley.

PAFA was established in 1805 as the first museum and art academy in the United States. It was the first to appoint a full-time female professor, Cecilia Beaux, in 1895.

The exhibit is on display until July 24.  

Read more at WHYY about the “Women in Motion” exhibit at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.