Spring Must-See Exhibits: How Women Shape our World

Must-See Spring: Three Current Exhibits Shining a Spotlight on How Women Shape Our World

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This spring is quietly delivering one of the most compelling art moments in recent memory — and the common thread running through all of it is vision: who holds it, who controls it, and what happens when women refuse to be confined to the frame someone else built for them. In New York, the Met is spotlighting Lillian Bassman, the photographer and art director who helped define the look of Harper’s Bazaar from the inside out. Her fashion photographs were so abstract — silhouettes dissolved into atmospheric blur, details obliterated by darkroom experimentation with tissues, brushes, and bleach — that she was even told her work was dangerous. The Met show traces her remarkable arc from 24-year-old design apprentice to art director to photographer, and her journey pushing American print media from safe to avant-garde. Notably, the exhibition includes a tear sheet of her inaugural Junior Bazaar cover in 1945, which features a photograph by a young Richard Avedon, his first-ever cover shot. Avedon was Bassman’s close friend and collaborator, and encouraged her to pursue photography as a career after leaving Harper’s Bazaar. Lillian Bassman: Bazaar and Beyond is on view now at the Metropolitan Museum through July 26.

Lillian Bassman: Bazaar and Beyond Lillian Bassman (American, 1917–2012)Variant of The Wonders of Water 1959 Platinum print, ca. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Lizzie and EricHimmel, 2025 © Estate of Lillian Bassman

Closer to home for us, SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film is now hosting Dior: Crafting Fashion — the House of Dior’s first exhibition in the entire Southeast, featuring pieces never before displayed publicly, from carefully preserved toiles and Lady Dior handbags to gowns worn by Lady Gaga and Demi Moore. The exhibit goes deep on the creative directors who shaped the maison — from Christian Dior himself through to Jonathan Anderson — including their early sketches, the gardens that inspired them, and the iconic looks that defined their eras. It runs through August 23 in Atlanta.

Dior: Crafting Fashion
Photograph courtesy of SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film

Finally, after a nation-wide tour, the largest collection of Georgia-native Amy Sherald’s work is coming home. The High Museum hosts Amy Sherald: American Sublime, a mid-career retrospective featuring more than 35 paintings spanning 2007 to 2024 on its final stop. Sherald, Columbus-born and a Clark Atlanta University alum, describes her work as an act of historical reclamation, making paintings that reach across time. The show is organized into five thematic sections tracing Sherald’s development as an artist, from her early explorations of identity and performance to her most monumental, large-scale works and also includes a film showcasing her process. It’s on view through September 27, and something tells us it’ll leave a mark.

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, 2018 Oil on Linen. Photo by Noah Washington/The Atlanta Voice.