This year's annual meeting will feature a special guest speaker, historian, curator, and ArtCurious podcast host Jennifer Dasal will discuss her new book The Club: Where American Women Artists Found Refuge in Belle Époque Paris.
This is a lively and engaging portrait of the American Girls’ Club, a transformative residence for American women artists from 1893 to 1914. At a time when educational opportunities were limited in the U.S., hundreds of ambitious American women crossed the Atlantic seeking formal training, independence, and community. The Club became a sanctuary—part salon, part dormitory, part incubator of radical creative lives.
Belle Époque Paris, with its extraordinary cultural flourishing and political stability, served as the epicenter of modernity and a haven for artists and intellectuals from around the world. Many American women artists, struggling to thrive or be taken seriously stateside, made the journey to Paris, too. Over the next two decades, the Club was the focal point for expatriate living and harbored a generation of talented and driven American women.
In this previously untold history, Jennifer Dasal sheds light on the women who lived there and the philanthropists who made it all possible. Deeply researched and with a stunning color photo insert, The Club reveals that these women developed relationships that went beyond the canvas. The Club became more than a residence: it was a revolutionary place for creativity, activism, and empowerment. This space allowed women of ambition to grow as teachers, artists, and suffragists and forge connections with iconic figures like Auguste Rodin, Gertrude Stein, and Emmeline Pankhurst.
Dasal combines rich historical detail with an immersive, quippy narrative style to illustrate how the Club was instrumental for the development of single American women dedicated to the fine arts. For readers longing to visit Belle Époque Paris, The Club is a captivating, colorful new history.
About the speaker
Jennifer Dasal is the creator and host of the ArtCurious podcast, which has been featured
in multiple local and national publications and websites, including O, the Oprah Magazine,
PC Magazine, ArtDaily, NPR, Salon and more. She is also the author of ArtCurious: Stories
of the Unexpected, Slightly Odd, and Strangely Wonderful in Art History. She holds an MA
in art history from the University of Notre Dame and a BA in art history from the
University of California, Davis. Dasal is the former curator of modern and contemporary
art at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, where she worked for thirteen years.
She lectures frequently on art both locally and nationally. Dasal lives in North Carolina
with her family.
Please Note: Limited seating is available. An 80% refund will be issued if the participant cancels two weeks prior to the event. For cancellations made less than two weeks prior to the event, BRAHM will issue a refund IF the museum is able to fill the vacated spot.
Participants must be over 21 years of age, with valid ID in order to drink alcoholic beverages. Participants under 18 are welcome with an adult.