A curator’s discovery: two Old Master works on paper join Toledo

What might have remained an academic exercise became something far more consequential when Megan Reddicks Pignataro, Curatorial Research Associate of European Art at the Toledo Museum of Art, set out to develop a mock acquisition proposal during the TEFAF Curator Course. Her research into works exhibited at TEFAF Maastricht 2025 crystallised into something tangible: the acquisition of two exceptional works on paper by women artists whose stories had long been marginal to the narrative of European art history.

The first, a delicate silverpoint self portrait by Swiss artist Anna Waser, depicts the artist as Flora, goddess of spring, her hair crowned with flowers and her gaze turned downward in a moment of quiet introspection. The work, created in 1704, reveals the technical mastery and imaginative vision of a woman working within the constraints of her era. The second acquisition, an etching and aquatint by Maria Katharina Prestel titled “The Triumph of Truth over Envy,” brings allegorical complexity to the collection, demonstrating the conceptual ambition that women artists of the period pursued.

Both works were presented at the fair by Nicolaas Teeuwisse. The acquisitions represent something more meaningful than the addition of two artworks to a museum’s collection: they constitute a deliberate act of historical revision, a reassertion of presence where absence had long prevailed.

Reddicks Pignataro’s experience with the TEFAF Curator Course underscores the fair’s commitment to shaping how museums think about collecting. In her reflections on the project, she articulates what drives contemporary curatorial practice: the necessity of broadening the narrative of European art history to include the overlooked achievements of women artists whose technical skill and creative vision merit the same scholarly attention and institutional recognition afforded their male contemporaries.

Imagery courtesy of TEFAF (@tefaf).