A special exhibition titled "Mary Cassatt at Work" has opened at the Honolulu Museum of Art (HoMA), running from June 21 through October 12. The show features 35 works, including 22 on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, eight from HoMA's own collection, and five Japanese prints from the museum's holdings. Curator Alejandra Rojas Silva highlights Cassatt's deep connection to HoMA—founder Anna Rice Cooke owned a Cassatt print—and the artist's fascination with Japanese woodblocks, which influenced her printmaking. The exhibition traveled from the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, with artworks carefully shipped across the Pacific.
This exhibition matters because it connects Cassatt's Impressionist work to Honolulu's exceptional Japanese print collection, the third largest outside Japan, emphasizing cross-cultural artistic exchange. It also reframes Cassatt's legacy by focusing on her depictions of women and children as active, laboring subjects rather than passive objects, aligning with contemporary conversations about gender and caregiving. For local audiences, the show makes the case that Cassatt belongs in Hawaiʻi, both through institutional history and thematic resonance.