The Instruction of Young Ladies: Arts from Private Girls’ Schools and Academies in Early America

The curriculum for “young ladies” who attended private boarding schools and female academies in early America included a wide range of artistic endeavors in addition to the reading, writing, and arithmetic emphasized in public schools of the time. Students were taught pictorial needlework, weaving, rug hooking, drawing, and painting in multiple media, and, to demonstrate their skills, produced samplers; pictorial rugs; painted and embroidered landscapes, memorial scenes, maps, and still-lifes; and more. The exhibit will focus on those works at the same time it explores the history of private female education in the United States and the key role of women educators in the growth of this country’s educational system.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.