The All-Women Exhibition Putting Penzance On The Art Map This Summer

Just when you needed another excuse to visit Penzance – Cornwall’s pretty port town, home to the iconic Jubilee Pool – along comes an exhibition that shoots it straight to the top of every art lover’s summer wishlist.

Making Her Mark, now open at Penlee House Gallery & Museum, champions the extraordinary breadth of Britain’s female artists: from Tracey Emin and Barbara Hepworth to Elizabeth Forbes and Laura Knight. It’s also a landmark show in its own right — the first stop on a three-part UK tour, launched as part of Art Fund’s ambitious £5.36 million Going Places programme, with Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum and Kirkcaldy Galleries in Fife to follow later this year.

The exhibition was jointly curated by all three venues, with Penlee House deputy director and curator Katie Herbert leading the project locally. Here, she takes us behind the scenes of a show that runs in Cornwall until September.

Meet The Curator: Making Her Mark

Portrait of Eileen Mayo (1920–1930) by Dod Procter R.A. Oil on canvas. (Penlee House Gallery & Museum, on loan from Private Collection © Bridgeman Images)

The Background

Making Her Mark: A Celebration of Women in Art is a touring exhibition exploring the role, impact and legacy of women in art. Women artists have made huge impacts on the development of British art. However, they have often been underrepresented, overlooked and undervalued in their fields.

The exhibition, the first to open as part of Art Fund’s Going Places programme, is a collaboration between Penlee House Gallery & Museum (owned and operated by Penzance Council), Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum (part of Museums Worcestershire) and Kirkcaldy Galleries (part of cultural charity OnFife). The three museums have brought together over 60 works by women artists from their respective collections, which will tour to each of the venues during 2026 and 2027.

Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum initially approached us with the idea to work in partnership, as both venues had worked collaboratively in the past and borrow from each other’s collections, and had shared interests. The partnership with OnFife came about as a result of an Art Fund networking event where interested parties were invited to share information about their collections and ideas for exhibitions. We discovered a natural affinity with OnFife, the founding of their galleries and their collections.

We discussed a number of themes that might connect our collections, such as our roots in antiquarian societies and climate change, but there has been a lot of work recently by various galleries both nationally and internationally to champion female artists and we felt that it was important to highlight the artists represented in our regional collections.

The links between the collections are strengthened by the artists represented. For instance, Laura Knight worked both in Cornwall and in Worcestershire, whilst Wilhelmina Barns-Graham was born in Fife but lived in Cornwall for a number of years.

The project also included community involvement during the development of the exhibition, with each partner museum working with care experienced young people to research and respond to the artwork and themes in the exhibition.

St Anthony and the Pigs (1932) by Joan
Manning-Sanders. Oil on canvas. (© The Artist’s Estate/Penlee House Gallery & Museum)

What Is On Display?

We thought about the challenges and issues faced by female artists across the periods covered by all three collections – from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day – and selected themes relevant to this. For example, access (or lack of) to training and art schools in the early 1900s; attitudes to what was considered ‘appropriate’ subject matters; the restrictions of raising a family and how this can impact careers, through to the recognition these women artists have received. We then chose works from our three collections which best reflected these themes.

A small number of women were honorary or associate members of the Royal Academy and the Royal Scottish Academy (founded 1826), but it was not until 1936 that Dame Laura Knight became the first elected woman academician. In 1944, sculptor Phyllis Mary Bone became the first woman elected to the Royal Scottish Academy.

The exhibition showcases the wide range of art created by women artists and includes a mix of works by historic and living artists from oil paintings, watercolours and prints through to tapestries and jewellery. Subjects include portraits, still lifes, abstracts and landscapes, many of which have strong links to the area in which they were created.

Historical exclusion means that women artists remain hugely under-represented in public art collections, including our own. We are actively looking to remedy this through making informed choices around collecting policies and seeking out opportunities to review and redress overall diversity in our collections.

Through the themes of the exhibition, the viewer can gain a better understanding of the challenges faced by women artists over different periods of time. The artworks may have been created one hundred years apart, but did the artists face the same challenges? For instance, women artists at the turn of the twentieth century would not have been allowed to study from the nude, as they would be in art schools today. However, this didn’t stop the artists of the Newlyn and Lamorna art colonies, who overcame this by using each other as models.

The exploration of subject matter is another example of how women artists were breaking down traditional barriers in order to fight for equality and recognition at the various art academies. Today, women are not confined by genre. Their work spans painting, performance, film, digital media, and social practice. From reimagining domestic spaces to tackling global systems of power, women continue to explore and expand what art can be, do, and represent.

Peille, A Hillside Village (1959) by Anne Redpath. Oil on canvas. (© Royal Scottish Academy/Bridgeman Images 2025)

The Highlights

With works selected from all three collections, the exhibition celebrates notable women artists from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, with extraordinary works by Elizabeth Forbes, Laura Knight, Dod Procter, Anne Redpath, Carol Rhodes, Caroline Walker and Tracey Emin amongst many more.

Highlights include Elizabeth Forbes’ A Zandvoort Fishergirl (1884), Dod Procter’s Portrait of Eileen Mayo (c1920s), Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s Gurnards Head, No.2 (1947), Gillian Ayres’s Sikar II (1993) and Caroline Walker’s Bathroom, Room 608 (2018). For the Penlee leg of the tour, the exhibition will include one of Dod Procter’s most well-known paintings, Morning (1926), on loan from Tate.

Another highlight of the exhibition will be a large collaborative banner created by care experienced young people supported by Carefree Cornwall, who have been working with local artists Elizabeth Howell and Kate Turner to respond creatively to the artworks in the exhibition and discuss issues around gender equality. Their artwork reflects their views and hopes for a fairer future and will also be shown in Worcester and Fife.

Penlee’s regular audience might be surprised by the inclusion of the more contemporary works, as our exhibitions are usually more historical. However, the aim of the exhibition is to give a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by women artists throughout history and how these are being addressed and overcome. It is also a great opportunity to showcase some amazing work by artists that our audience may not be familiar with, and that they may not otherwise get the opportunity to see without travelling hundreds of miles.

Penlee House Gallery & Museum

While You’re There…

Set in a tranquil park, Penlee House Gallery & Museum is famous for its collection of Newlyn School paintings (1880–1910). On the first floor, there is a selection of work by artists such as Stanhope Forbes, Elizabeth Forbes, Norman Garstin and Walter Langley, including Langley’s 1908 painting Cornish Fisherfolk, recently acquired with the support of the Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, Art Fund and The Friends of Penlee House. There is also a display of local history and archaeology relating to West Cornwall, including Cryséde textiles and hand beaten copper items from the Newlyn Industrial Class.

Penzance

The Debrief

Our newly-opened licensed café, The Coach House Café, in Penlee Park, is the perfect place to relax with a delicious meal made from local produce, or a coffee and homemade cake. The outside terrace makes a lovely sunny place to sit in fine weather. There is also a Children’s Play Area at the bottom of the park.

After lunch, take a short stroll into town to visit The Exchange which, along with Newlyn Art Gallery, offers a changing programme of contemporary exhibitions. Commercial galleries such as Cornwall Contemporary and The Lighthouse Gallery are also well worth a look.

Penzance has a variety of interesting architecture and independent shops so an afternoon spent winding your way down Causewayhead, Chapel Street, Regent’s Square and along the seafront will reveal Georgian and Victorian buildings, historic pubs and the elaborately designed Egyptian House.

If you’re staying in the area, head over to Newlyn and wander the narrow streets and harbourside made famous by the Newlyn School artists at the turn of the twentieth century.

Looking for somewhere to stay? Former rectory turned adults-only luxury B&B Sancreed House Retreat is C&TH’s favourite hotel in the area, just a 12 minute drive away. On theme, the three charming garden cottages were originally used by artist John Miller’s students. Find out more here.

SEE IT

Making Her Mark opened at Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance on 30 April and runs until 27 September 2026. The Gallery is open 10am to 5pm, Monday to Saturday, and Sundays from July through to the end of the exhibition. You may want to visit on a Tuesday or Thursday morning to take advantage of our free guided tours. If you have children, we hold weekly Saturday afternoon activities, and under 5s sessions monthly on a Monday morning.

Following the conclusion of the exhibition at Penlee House, it will then tour to Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum from 16 January to 13 June 2027 and to Kirkcaldy Galleries from 26 June to 28 November 2027.

Admission is £8 for adults, £4 for young people (18-26), and free for children, carers and National Art Pass members. There’s no need to book ahead, but you can find out more at penleehouse.org.uk