Jennifer Dasal on American Women, Art, and the Belle Époque

Event begins at 1pm PT / 2pm MT / 3pm CT / 4pm ET

Join us for a conversation with Jennifer Dasal, author of The Club: Where American Women Artists Found Refuge in Belle Époque Paris, to hear the deliciously entertaining, never-before-told history of a residence for American women artists in Paris from 1893 to 1914.  

In Belle Époque Paris, the Eiffel Tower was newly built, France was experiencing remarkable political stability, and American women were painting the town and gathering at a female-only Residence known as The American Girls' Club in Paris. Opened in 1893, The Club was the center of expatriate living and of dedication to a calling in the fine arts, and singularly harbored a generation of independent, talented, and driven American women.

Now in The Club, curator, art historian, and podcast host Jennifer Dasal presents the never-before-told story of the Club, the philanthropists who created it, and the artists it housed. These women forged connections in the arts and letters with luminaries like Auguste Rodin and Gertrude Stein or became activists through their relationships with the likes of Emmeline Pankhurst. But just as importantly, these women's lives revealed the power of the Club itself, and the way that having a safe home for single women of ambition allowed them to grow as teachers, artists, suffragists, and people.

Jennifer Dasal is an art historian, curator, lecturer, and author. After stumbling into an art history class as an undergraduate student at UC Davis, Jennifer was hooked. She went on to complete an M.A. in Art History from University of Notre Dame, and completed PhD coursework in art history at the Pennsylvania State University. She is the former curator of modern and contemporary art at the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA), where she worked for thirteen years. In 2016, she became the the creator and host of the ArtCurious Podcast, which was chosen as one of PC Magazine’s Best Podcasts of the Year for three years in a row (2018-2020). Dasal’s first book, ArtCurious: Stories of the Unexpected, Slightly Odd, and Strangely Wonderful in Art History, has received a much-coveted “starred” review from Publishers Weekly. Her second book, The Club: Where American Women Artists Found Refuge in Belle Epoque Paris, was released this summer to positive reviews, including profiles in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Shelf Awareness, and more. 

Here are links to both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times reviews, as well as an additional profile in the Times when "The Club" was featured as one of "20 Books to Read in July."

To purchase a copy of The Club, visit bookshop.org.