Royal Alley-Barnes

An accomplished painter and muralist, her background in the arts framed her response to problems as varied as how to reduce youth violence, protect the environmental quality of the Mercer Island Slough, and improve the financial viability of Seattle city-owned arts facilities.

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Barbara Earl Thomas

The former Executive Director of Seattle’s Northwest African American Museum, Barbara Earl Thomas is far more than an institutional administrator. She is also an inspiring lecturer on the topics of art and culture and — as the University of Washington Press notes — a “painter and writer of prodigious talent and remarkable visionary sensibility.”

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Patti Warashina

American ceramicist internationally recognized for her technically refined, figurative sculptures that helped expand the boundaries of clay as a medium.

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Emme Gerhard

When the Gerhard sisters opened their own photographic studio in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1903, newspapers and magazines rarely hired women as staff photographers to capture late breaking news. But photographs by Emme and Mayme Gerhard appeared frequently in local and national media.

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Mayme Gerhard

When the Gerhard sisters opened their own photographic studio in St. Louis, Missouri in 1903, newspapers and magazines rarely hired women as staff photographers to capture late breaking news. But photographs by Emme and Mayme Gerhard appeared frequently in local and national media.

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Zaida Ben-Yusuf

Ben-Yúsuf was one of the “New Women” who joined the paid labor force in the 1890s. She was in the vanguard of women who became professional photographers as magazines reached massive circulation figures, and photographs supplanted drawn illustration art.

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