Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot Featured in Summer Exhibition at Fenimore Art Museum

Opening May 24, Mary Cassatt / Berthe Morisot: Allies in Impressionism highlights the influence these two artists had on one another and their impact on the Impressionist movement.

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — This summer, Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, presents Mary Cassatt / Berthe Morisot: Allies in Impressionism, on view May 24 – September 1, 2025. The exhibition highlights the influence these two artists had on one another and their overarching impact on the Impressionist movement.

The Parisian art scene in the late 19th century was fueled by change. Artists were branching out from the stuffy and stifling Paris Salon and experimenting with new styles and methods of depicting modern life. Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) and Berthe Morisot (1841-1895), thrust together due to their involvement in the Impressionist circle in the 1870s and 1880s, rose within the ranks to become two of the most important women artists of the period. For countless years they have served as an interesting comparison for art enthusiasts. Morisot proved a woman could have both a family and a successful career and Cassatt held the belief a woman only needed her independence to be fulfilled.

Historians of Impressionism have long wondered how these two influenced each other’s artistic output. There is much overlap in the scenes and subjects the two depict, as well as their equal ability to triumph within the male dominated Impressionist circle as two of the only four women associated with the group. At a time when women’s roles in Parisian society were changing, Cassatt and Morisot were at the forefront, painting the women of Paris at the turn of the century.

Mary Cassatt / Berthe Morisot: Allies in Impressionism is sponsored in part by The Clark Foundation, Nellie and Robert Gipson, NYCM Insurance, and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. The exhibition catalog is made possible through a generous gift from Denise Littlefield Sobel.

Also, this summer, The Power of Photography: 19^th-20^th Century Original Master Prints (May 24 – September 1, 2025) featuring a selection of 120 iconic images by 120 different photographers, which celebrate the photograph’s unique capacity for relatability. Fenimore presents eleven exhibitions in 2025 alongside its world-renowned collections of fine art, folk art, and Native American art, which includes The Thaw Collection of American Indian Art.

Fenimore Art Museum, nestled on the shore of picturesque Otsego Lake, offers visitors to the village of Cooperstown an opportunity to experience a wide variety of world-class art in an idyllic, small-town setting. Summer hours begin May 24: open daily 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Visit FenimoreArt.org for more information.

2025 EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS:

Boundless Spirit: American Folk Art at the Fenimore Art Museum
April 1 – December 31, 2025

American Masterworks
April 1 – December 31, 2025

Mary Cassatt / Berthe Morisot: Allies in Impressionism
May 24 – September 1, 2025

The Power of Photography: 19^th-20^th Century Original Master Prints
May 24 – September 1, 2025

Exploring Calvin and Hobbes
September 13 – December 31, 2025

ONGOING EXHIBITIONS:

• The Thaw Collection of American Indian Art
• American Memory: Recalling the Past in Folk Art

About Fenimore Art Museum

Fenimore Art Museum, located on the shores of Otsego Lake—James Fenimore Cooper’s “Glimmerglass”—in historic Cooperstown, New York, presents changing exhibitions each season. Past shows have featured artists such as Keith Haring, Ansel Adams, Banksy, M.C. Escher, and many others. The museum features a wide-ranging collection of American art including folk art; important American 18th- and 19th-century landscape, genre, and portrait paintings from artists including Albert Bierstadt, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, Frederic Edwin Church, Childe Hassam, Martin Johnson Heade, Robert Henri, George Inness, Eastman Johnson, Joshua Johnson, Thomas Moran, Georgia O’Keeffe, Maurice Prendergast, John Singer Sargent, Max Weber, and James McNeill Whistler; more than 125,000 historic photographs representing the technical developments made in photography and providing extensive visual documentation of the region’s unique history; and the renowned Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art comprised of nearly 900 art objects representative of a broad geographic range of North American Indian cultures, from the Northwest Coast, Eastern Woodlands, Plains, Southwest, Great Lakes, and Prairie regions. Visit FenimoreArt.org.