WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Museums entice us to feel awe. You enter former royal palaces, stand before “The Night Watch,” “Las Meninas,” or “The Raft of the Medusa” and sense it immediately: behind these giant, public-facing masterpieces, a species of greatness — not just in terms of mechanics and technique but conception and spirit. You get what you paid for, and more.
These women painters inaugurated a new chapter in human history

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