Veiled to Visible: Motherhood and Maternity in the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art

The Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art (CCWA) comprises nearly one thousand works by Australian women artists. It began life as a private collection and became the Cruthers Collection in 2007 when approximately 460 works were gifted to the University of Western Australia (UWA) by Sir James and Lady Sheila Cruthers (1925–2011). The gift was intended to grant public access, curatorial enquiry and independent research into the collection, which is managed by the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery. Sheila Cruthers began collecting in the early 1970s, focusing on self-portraits of female artists, often paired with a genre painting by the same artist. It was a strategy she maintained over several decades to deepen understanding of artists who were then relatively unknown.