The Tarble Arts Center is hosting an exhibit outlining the changing role of women in art since the late 19th century.

The Skirting Convention Exhibit looks into the lives of Illinois women and their artworks between the Civil War and World War I and the growing presence women held in art.

“It’s an opportunity to talk about how the opportunities for women to study art and to work as artists changed over that century of time,” said Kristan McKinsey, the vice president of collections and exhibits at Lakeview Museum of Arts and Sciences in Peoria.

The Lakeview Museum of Arts and Sciences organized the exhibit.

During the Civil War and for several decades after the war, McKinsey said women had few opportunities to practice art.

“Society did not always accept that; women were supposed to be wives and stay home,” she said. “Some of the women, especially in the earlier days, had to give up being artists, any dream of having a career in art when they got married.”

Even if women were able to get into art schools, they contributions to art would normally go unnoticed.

“Many of these women had not been remembered since their death because they had not made a national reputation that they were quite talented,” McKinsey said.

However, as World War I called men to the frontlines, art schools and exhibition halls began to allow women to fill their classes and halls, McKinsey said.

“When men go off to war, an art school doesn’t want to close their doors and go broke because they have no admission or tuition payments, so they start to let women in,” she said.

The Skirting Convention Exhibit spans various styles of art, including impressionism, surrealism and abstraction, as well as various media of art, like paintings, drawing and prints.

The artworks were collected by Channy Lyons, a Peoria-based author and editor, who has collected the artworks from all over Illinois.

“This relates to long-going project she had,” McKinsey said. “She’s identified over 500 women artists working in that time period in Illinois. This is just a sampling of those,” she said.

The exhibit is on display until Sept. 16, and admission is free.

Tim Deters can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].