In October 2026, the American Folk Art Museum will present Locating Girlhood: Place and Identity in Early American “Schoolgirl” Art. Featuring exceptional examples of needlework and other ornamental arts created by American girls in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this major exhibition offers fresh insight into a rich yet understudied genre. Through a remarkable selection of works, Locating Girlhood reexamines the relationship between place, education, and identity, constituting one of the most significant presentations on the subject in recent memory.
Published in conjunction with the exhibition is a lavishly illustrated volume presenting new scholarship on key works drawn from major collections of girlhood embroidery and ornamental arts. In addition to essays by curators Emelie Gevalt and Caroline Culp, the publication includes a foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, contributions by art historian Elizabeth Bacon Eager and literary scholar William Huntting Howell, and an afterword by art historian Andrea Pappas.
