Artist Betty Woodman reflects on a Minoan terracotta larnax in this episode of The Artist Project.

Digital Editor Pac Pobric looks back at Betty Woodman's big splash at the Museum.

Teen Advisory Group Member Jamilah writes about what the ideal woman looked like during the Renaissance.

The New Woman was a global ideal of female empowerment based on real women making revolutionary changes in life and art.

A conservator describes the techniques Picasso used to create his ink and charcoal drawing, _Standing Woman_ (1912).

The hallmarks of the eighteenth century—its opulence, charm, wit, intelligence—are embodied in the age's remarkable women. These women held sway in the salons, in the councils of state, in the ballrooms, in the bedrooms; they enchanted (or intimidated) the most powerful of men and presided over an extraordinary cultural flowering of unprecedented luxury and sophistication. It is this captivating world that Olivier Bernier recreates. A world in which the shrewdness of Madame de Pompadour or the beauty of Madame du Barry could change the course of great nations. A world that could encompass the piquant frankness of Abigail Adams and the dark plotting of the queen of Naples. This world has been swept away, but its great ladies, the first modern women, still speak to us. Fourteen dashing and sometimes tragic women—empress and dressmaker, bluestocking and courtesan—come to life here in a series of lavishly illustrated essays. Delightfully informative, this timely book charts the beginnings of women's liberation, illuminates the century for those who are unfamiliar with it, and provides new insights for those who know it well.

Among the gorgeous garments on display in the exhibition American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity (closing August 15) is an exquisite black evening dress attributed to Madame Marie Gerber of the house of Callot Soeurs. I spoke with Andrew Bolton, curator in the Met's Costume Institute, about the dress's bold design and glamorous, influential owner.

Summer visitors to the Met have only three more weeks—through Sunday, August 15—to view the popular exhibitions Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity.

Monkman inaugurates The Met’s annual Great Hall Commission with _mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People)_.