Arts & Literature: First Woman To ...

• ~1614-1620 - Artemisia Gentileschi, an Italian Early Baroque painter, was the first female painter to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence in an era when women painters were not easily accepted by the artistic community. She was also one of the first female artists to paint historical and religious paintings, at a time when such heroic themes were considered beyond a woman's reach.


• 1707 - Henrietta Johnston begins to work as a portrait artist in Charles Town (now Charleston), South Carolina, making her the first known professional woman artist in America.


• 1894 - Suzanne Valadon was the first woman admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in France.


• 1931 - Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney becomes the first woman to found a major art museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.


• 1956 - In the Art Deco era, Hildreth Meiere became known for her large-scale mosaics and in 1956 was the first woman honored with the Fine Arts Medal of the American Institute of Architects.


• 1993 - Rachel Whiteread becomes the first woman to win the Turner Prize, an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under 50 and the most well-known art award in Britain.


• 2004 - Zaha Hadid, an Iraqi born British citizen, is chosen as the 2004 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize marking the first time a woman has been named for the then 26-year-old award.

• 1897 - Amy Beach's "Gaelic Symphony" is the first symphony by a woman performed in the United States, and possibly the world.


• 1913 - Lili Boulanger is the first woman to win the Grand Prix de Rome for her cantata Faust et Hélène.


• 1914 - Mary Davenport-Engberg is the first woman to conduct a symphony orchestra, in Bellingham, Washington.


• 1920 - Australian opera singer Dame Nellie Melba becomes the first person heard on radio when she sings at the Marconi works in Chelmsford, England.


• 1930 - Ruth Crawford Seeger is the first woman to win a Guggenheim Fellowship in composition for a year abroad. She spends time in Paris where she meets Maurice Ravel and finishes what becomes her best known work, her String Quartet 1931.

Source: Women in Communication bio

• 1933 - Shelia Borrett becomes the first woman radio announcer.


• 1936 - Elizabeth Cowell becomes the first woman TV announcer when she is choosen to host programs on the BBC Television Service.


• 1948 - Pauline Frederick covered political conventions for ABC Television in the summer of 1948, making her the first woman news correspondent on network TV. She was hired away by NBC in 1953 to cover the United Nations.


• 1976 - Barbara Walters becomes the first female newscaster on a network news program. She signed a 5-year contract with ABC television as the evening news anchorwoman, a job she shared with Harry Reasoner.


• 2006 - Katie Couric creates a stir as the first solo woman evening news anchor, moving to CBS to take over the evening news after a long career as host of Today.

• 1660 - It was in a production of Shakespeare's "Othello" that the first woman acted on the English stage. Before Margaret Hughes starred as Desdemona in this groundbreaking performance, boys played all the female roles.


• 1896 - Alice Guy Blaché, the first American woman film director, shoots the first of her more than 300 films, a short feature called La Fee aux Choux (The Cabbage Fairy).


• 1929 - Janet Gaynor becomes the first recipient of the Academy Award for an actress in a leading role. She became the first, and only, actress to win for a silent screen role.


• 2000 - Although women have been acting in movies and earning awards for their work since the 1920s, it wasn't until 2000 that Julia Roberts became the first actress to earn the same top dollar as men have earned - $20 million per film - when she took home that paycheck for Erin Brockovich. She also earned an Academy Award for that role.

• 1909 - Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlof becomes the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, honored in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings. She is known known internationally for Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige (a story for children, in the most common translation titled The Wonderful Adventures of Nils).


• 1921 - American novelist Edith Wharton becomes the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, winning for her novel The Age of Innocence.


• 2002 - Canadian poet Anne Carson becomes the first woman to win the TS Eliot Prize. Founded in 1995, the £10,000 prize is regarded as the most distinguished poetry award.

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