Cultural Involvement

 

The CWC has a deep-rooted appreciation of the arts and human intellectual achievement.​ Our cultural involvement is celebrated not only by our profession of faith, as Catholic women, but also through cultural events. A few examples are outlined below:

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• The Club is a continuing supporter of The Nora Houston Foundation, which was established in 2015 to raise funds to preserve and display Ms. Houston's art work. Eleanora "Nora" Houston, President of the Catholic Woman’s Club 1934-1936, was born in 1883 in Richmond, Virginia. As an adult, she was an art teacher, whose work included portraits, landscapes depicting the Virginia countryside, African American neighborhoods and daily life, and historical paintings of early Virginia Catholic martyrs. She was the founding member of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia, which later became the Virginia League of Women Voters.  After her death in 1942, her paintings were donated to St. Paul’s Catholic School and were stored in St. Paul’s Catholic Church. In 2020, the CWC made a significant donation to the Foundation to help restore some of her paintings and to help pay for a grave marker that had been planned. 

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St. Paul’s Catholic Church has recently transferred some of these paintings to Commonwealth Catholic Charities (CCC), and the remainder to the Valentine Museum for storage.  CCC displays the paintings in their possession at their headquarters (1601 Rolling Hills Drive, Henrico, VA 23229), and a few appear on their website cccofva.org/Hope Gallery.

 

In August, 2020, the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Constitutional Amendment giving women the right to vote, the grave marker was dedicated at Ms. Houston’s previously unmarked grave in Shockhoe Hill Cemetery in Richmond. The Club continues to support the efforts of the Foundation to preserve and restore these works of art that have historical significance portraying the era in which she lived.

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• ​In addition, the CWC was one of the sponsors of the national exhibit of Art and Remembrance – Fabric of Survival hosted at the time through the Jewish Community Center in Richmond. This exhibit displayed the work of Esther Nisenthal Krinitz created decades later for her daughters which memorialized her experiences during the Holocaust. Esther's haunting memories led her to create thirty-six (36) panels of extraordinary works of art using the techniques of embroidery, fabric applique, and stitched narrative captioning. Most of these remarkable panels, with vivid colors and striking detail, reveal a young girl’s struggle to survive in Nazi-occupied Poland and her ultimate escape to freedom in America. Trained as a dressmaker but with no training in art, Esther picked up a needle and thread, intending simply to show her children all that she had gone through. Yet the art she created—both beautiful and shocking—is universal in its appeal, expressing deep love of family and personal courage in the face of terror and loss. These magnificent panels are headquartered at Art and Remembrance in Washington, D.C. and are on loan for exhibit at the American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM) located in Baltimore, MD through December, 2030. Esther’s daughter, Bernice Steinhardt, is President of Art and Remembrance. These beautiful panels can also be seen online via their website artandremembrance.org.

 

• Of course, the Catholic Woman’s Club’s support of the first Catholic settlement in Virginia is outlined in detail on our Home page.