The Historical Society of Woodstock will open its 2025 season with an exhibition celebrating the women who helped define one of the nation’s oldest artist colonies. “Making Her Mark: 50 Women Artists of the Historic Woodstock Art Colony” opens Saturday, July 12, at 20 Comeau Drive, with a public reception at 3 p.m.

Curated by art historian Bruce Weber, the exhibition spans nearly a century of creative output and features paintings, drawings and prints drawn from the Society’s permanent collection. The show runs through September 7.

In advance of the opening, Weber shared with The Overlook biographical notes on three artists whose work reflects the range, innovation and lasting influence of Woodstock’s women artists.

Ilonka Karasz (1896–1981)

Ilonka Karasz in the 1920s, a period when she produced original lithographs in Woodstock and became a pioneering force in textile and furniture design. She later illustrated 186 covers for The New Yorker. Photo by Nickolas Muray, courtesy of Bruce Weber.


A Hungarian émigré and Greenwich Village modernist, Karasz brought a fierce originality to everything she touched—from early poster work for the Maverick Festival to her pioneering textile and furniture designs. In Woodstock, she created lithographs with Hervey White and Carl Eric Lindin, and helped design a Maverick theatre alongside Andrew Dasburg and Henry Lee McFee. Later, Karasz became one of The New Yorker’s most prolific cover artists, illustrating 186 issues over five decades. Her drawings, often depicting women with large eyes and angular poise, were praised in her day for their “dignity and grandeur.” The Cooper Hewitt Museum today holds a significant collection of her work.

— Bruce Weber

Peggy Bacon (1895–1987)

Peggy Bacon in the 1930s around the time she co-founded the satirical publication “The Hue and Cry.” Known for her wit and drypoint technique, she went on to become one of America’s leading caricaturists. Photo by Peter A, Juley and Son, courtesy of Bruce Weber.


Sharp-witted and endlessly prolific, Bacon was best known for her satirical illustrations and drypoint prints. She arrived in Woodstock in 1919 with her husband, painter Alexander Brook, and quickly embedded herself in the colony’s social fabric—especially at Woodstock and the Maverick. In 1923, she co-founded The Hue and Cry, a humorous newspaper chronicling local happenings. A decade later, her book “Off with Their Heads!” cemented her reputation as one of the country’s foremost caricaturists. She illustrated more than 60 books in her lifetime, 19 of which she authored, and later in life turned to painting, teaching and mixed media.

— Bruce Weber

Norma Morgan (1928–2017)

Norma Morgan at Mallaig, Scotland, August 1966. Morgan traveled widely, capturing dramatic landscapes in both the U.K. and the U.S. in prints and paintings that bridged realism and abstraction. Photo by Don Macrae, courtesy of Bruce Weber.


A singular voice in American printmaking and one of the few Black artists active in Woodstock during her time. Morgan’s work bridges the figurative and the abstract, the political and the poetic. She studied engraving under William Stanley Hayter in the 1950s and produced searing portraits of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, as well as luminous landscapes of the U.S. and U.K. After settling in Woodstock in 1969, Morgan remained connected to the local art scene for over four decades, writing poetry and exhibiting widely. Her recent posthumous retrospective at the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum has helped catalyze renewed interest in her legacy.

— Bruce Weber

For more information about the exhibition, visit www.woodstockhistory.org.

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