Depicting female figures in repose and solitude with a quiet confidence, New Jersey-based artist Danielle Mckinney’s quietly evocative paintings are on display now at the Norton Museum of Art through early autumn.
They are part of the museum’s 2026 Recognition of Art by Women (RAW) exhibition in a survey exhibition titled Danielle Mckinney: Shelter, running through Oct. 4.
With more than 40 paintings and five watercolors from the last five years of the artist’s practice, the show at the Norton, curated by J. Rachel Gustafson, chief curatorial officer, is her most comprehensive museum exhibit to date.
“The Recognition of Art by Women series is central to the Norton’s mission,” says CEO Ghislain d’Humières. “Each exhibition offers an opportunity to showcase the work of exceptional women artists and to highlight their lasting impact on the field.”
“Danielle Mckinney’s exhibition continues this legacy, reflecting the power and diversity of artistic voices that define the RAW program,” he says.
A concurrent group exhibition, Recognition of Art by Women: In Retrospect, curated by Arden Sherman, the Glenn W. and Cornelia T. Bailey senior curator of contemporary art, showcases the works of nine artists whose works have appeared in previous iterations of RAW. That exhibition runs through Sept. 27.
First launched in 2011, the RAW exhibition series — now in its 10th iteration — is a biennial event dedicated to major solo exhibitions by living women artists.
This show brings together works by the nine artists previously exhibited in the RAW series for the first time. They include British artists Jenny Saville (who was part of the very first show) and Phyllida Barlow, and American artists Sylvia Plimack Mangold and Nina Chanel Abney.
The other artists include Swedish sculptor Krista Kristalova, Austrian painter Svenja Deininger, Colombian visual artist María Berrío, Santa Clara Pueblo artist Rose B. Simpson and Nigerian-born, Los Angeles-based painter Njideka Akunyili Crosby.
Crosby’s 2016 large-scale oil painting and collage, Super Blue Omo, depicts scenes from her childhood in Nigeria — a woman relaxing on a sofa, tea-time objects resting on a coffee table and a small TV with a well-known Nigerian commercial advertising a popular Nigerian detergent called Super Blue Omo.
The commercial was a ubiquitous soundtrack to her childhood in the 1980s.
The painting, which incorporates elements of her family and traditional Nigerian fabrics, was a hit at Art Basel in 2016 and has recently been acquired by the Norton.
Simpson, who had a full show at the Norton in 2024 showcasing her clay sculptures, is featured as part of RAW with her 2022 Vital Organ: Gut, a ceramic sculpture.
The monumental androgynous figure, with a large, open geometric form on its head, is marked with various lines and symbols, dots and crosses, representing a visual language offering guidance, direction and protection.
Meant to honor intuition and her gut instinct (which she admits she sometimes ignores), the sculpture is fabricated out of one piece of solid red clay that the artist created during her time at California State University Long Beach’s Center for Contemporary Ceramics.
“Rose has a unique style and language to her work,” curator Sherman says. “She’s following her gut instincts and bearing witness with her figures — note their eyes are always open.”
The artist, from a long matrilineal line of indigenous clay ceramicists, is a member of the Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico and her work reflects her background and culture.
According to figures provided by the Norton Museum of Art, only 14.9 percent of exhibitions at 31 prominent American museums from 2008 to 2020 featured work by women artists.
The Norton has made it a priority to showcase works of art by women artists and says that 44 percent of its exhibitions highlighted women artists. According to the West Palm Beach museum’s data, between 2020 and 2025 this trajectory has increased, with women artists predominantly featured in 57 percent of all their exhibitions.
They note a similar trend in collections of work by women artists: From 2008 to 2020, only 11 percent of acquisitions from the national museum sample were artworks by women, compared to 22 percent at the Norton. Last year, 54 percent of the Norton’s acquisitions were by women artists.
But the national museum acquisition trend is even lower for women artists of color.
A Black woman artist, Mckinney, 45, was trained as a photographer at Parsons School of Design in New York, where she earned her MFA in 2013. She decried the lack of Black female figures in classical paintings and wanted to remedy that. Her solitary female figures — whether lounging, smoking or just “chillaxing” — offer viewers a glimpse into moments of private contemplation, respite or reverie.
“Mckinney’s paintings unfold like moments suspended in time,” says Gustafson. “They invite viewers to consider the emotional and spiritual dimensions of solitude, and how stillness itself can become a site of imagination and strength.”
“Her work captures an interior world that feels both deeply personal and profoundly human,” she says.
The exhibit is organized into different themes — Glow, Witness, Nocturne, Exhale and Epilogue — (many of her figures are depicted smoking and exhaling smoke or holding lit cigarettes) tracing a progression from physical presence to self-actualization.
The Epilogue section showcases a series of five of her most recent watercolors.
In Sandman, Mckinney takes inspiration from Picasso’s 1932 painting Le Rêve, which gazes down on the figure of a woman in repose lying face down on a couch, a lit cigarette between her fingers, her legs up in the air. A large flower arrangement on a coffee table in front of her camouflages her naked figure.
“I want to keep it classy,” the artist explains.
She often uses this “painting within painting” technique, incorporating works by Matisse, Hopper and Picasso.
“This layering of historical references and techniques transforms Mckinney’s domestic spaces from ordinary rooms into settings that feel luxurious and exclusive, mirroring the idea of rest as a coveted commodity,” says Gustafson.
In Cortex, a woman dressed in white reclines on a white settee, one leg up, the other draped on the floor. The image recalls Edward Hopper, where the central figure of a woman reclaims space and time for herself.
Her painting, Yesterday, was inspired by her 4-year-old daughter asking her, “Mommy, what is yesterday?” and by a photograph by William Eggleston. With a warm and muted palette, Mckinney’s figure reclines on a bed bathed in a golden light, reminiscent of both photography and Hopper like solitude.
The artist has said that she doesn’t view her work as inherently personal. She perceives the women in her paintings as embodying universal themes. Her paintings focus on quiet emotions, quiet power, reverie and leisure and a time for unwinding and reflection.
Mckinney has said the figures in her paintings convey a sense of poised strength, embodying the grace that can be found in moments of stillness. Her figures exude a quiet confidence and a renewed sense of spirit and energy.
Her sensual interiors become necessary sites of spiritual restoration, proving internal shelter is fostered through authority over one’s own time and space, Gustafson says.
“Life comes at us so fast in modern times, but her paintings of women in interior spaces reflect what it feels like to be truly comfortable with yourself,” she says.
Mckinney sees these interiors as invitations — spaces where the viewer can slow down, breathe and enter the quiet.
In a world bombarded by non-stop messaging, Mckinney’s paintings offer something increasingly rare — a moment of stillness, a chance to block out the noise and simply be.
“It’s a chance for you to enter the space and bring your own experience,” Mckinney says.
If you go
What: Danielle Mckinney: Shelter, running through Oct. 4, RAW: In Retrospect, running through Sept. 27
Where: Norton Museum of Art, 1450 S. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach
Hours: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm; Friday, 10 am to 10 pm, Sunday, 11 am to 5 pm. Closed Tuesdays. Admission: $18 adults, $15 seniors (60-plus), students, $5, children 12 and under, free. Call 561-832-5196 or visit www.norton.org.