Women View the 20th Century.

• Position: Saint Louis Art Museum

"While women throughout the history of art have usually been relegated to the passive role of muse or object of desire, the photographers featured in this exhibition have actively engaged the audience, stimulating debate, contemplation, and discovery."

AN EXHIBITION organized by The Saint Louis (Mo.) Art Museum offers a rare opportunity to view the works of an international array of more than 80 women photographers. Drawn from a private collection, the exhibition features well-known photographers as well as others who only recently have been restored to the history of the medium. Most of the images are vintage prints, some of which have never before been published.

Among the photographers in the show who have made lasting contributions to the field are Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, Nan Goldin, Dorothea Lange, and Cindy Sherman. Through documentary photography and photojournalism, portraiture, still-life, and constructed photographic tableaux, they have provided compelling pictures on life, the self, and their subjects' relationship to the world and to each other.

According to Olivia Lahs-Gonzales, acting curator of prints, drawings, and photographs at...