One of the greatest children's illustrators of our time was Trina Schart Hyman, whose Snow White is shown here. Hyman won the 1985 Caldecott Medal for picture book illustration, the "Nobel" of children's artists, and decorated over 150 books in her lifetime. As a child, adoring the story of Little Red Riding Hood, she wore a red cape for an entire year. 

Kara Walker 's huge, wall-covering cut-paper silhouettes elevate a 19th Century pastime to an explosive 21st Century expression.

​The famous animal artist Rosa Bonheur kept four "of the sweetest and the fiercest" lions in the menagerie at her estate. Her favorite lioness, Pierette, would stand with her paws on Bonheur's shoulders as they stared into each other's eyes. Alas, no image of that exists, but the image below was painted by Bonheur herself. On the estate she and her partner Natalie kept not only the lions, but also cats, dogs, horses, donkeys, oxen, sheep, goats, red deer, roe deer, boars, monkeys, gazelles, elk, mouflons, izards (not lizards), and a  yak. 

​"Coming Storm" by Anna Mary "Grandma" Moses, who started painting seriously at age 78, becoming world famous. She lived to be 101, in Eagle Bridge, NY. Described as a "folk artist" or "primitivist," she saw her work collected by many museums, including the Met and the National Museum of Women in the arts. The Bennington Museum in Vermont has the largest collection of her works.

​Delayed by the pandemic, Britain's blockbuster National Gallery exhibit of Artemisia Gentileschi's paintings opened yesterday, the most inclusive show ever of this powerful artist's work. Her best-known painting is Judith Beheading Holofernes (below), considered by many to be a partial answer to her rape by fellow artist Antonio Tassi. Gentileschi emphasized many powerful women in her oeuvre, including Mary Magdalene and Susanna, among others. A precocious talent, she completed a major work, Susanna and the Elders, when she was just 17.

Augusta Savage's powerful "Harp," most popular art work at the 1939 New York World's Fair.

An example of the remarkable imagination of architect Zaha Hadid, first woman to win the Pritzker Prize.