The Pen and Brush, Inc., founded in 1894, is the oldest nonprofit multidisciplinary arts organization for women, serving literary and performing artists as well as visual artists. Its mission is to advocate for and promote the equality of opportunities available to women in the arts. By expanding the influence and significance of women artists, Pen and Brush supports the inherent value of their work.

Founded by two sisters, Janet and Mary Lewis, the organization began life informally with a dozen of the sister’s professional artist colleagues who gathered in their painting studio in 1892. Convinced they had a going concern, their formal organizing meeting was held in 1894 at the Fifth Avenue Hotel and culminated with Pen and Brush adopting a constitution and bylaws. Pen and Brush’s records from 1894 to 1965 are on microfilm and are part of the Archives of American Art, a branch of the Smithsonian.

By 1912, Pen and Brush was flourishing and decided to take the step of incorporating the organization, an special achievement as it would be another 8 years before the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution gave women the right to vote. Not surprisingly, Ellen Axson Wilson, wife of Woodrow Wilson, US President at the time of the 19th Amendment’s passage, was invited to join Pen and Brush, Inc. and accepted.

Mrs. Wilson was followed by Eleanor Roosevelt, Pearl Buck (the only member to have received both the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes for literature), Marianne Moore and Margaret Widdemer, also Pulitzer honorees, and from various fields: Martha Gelhorn, Malvina Hoffman, Jessie Tarbox Beals, Margaret Bourke White, Ceila Beaux, Grace Thompson Seton, Anya Seton, and Pen and Brush’s longest serving president, Ida Tarbell, Faith Baldwin, Katherine Thayer Hobson, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Isabel Whitney, Betty Waldo Parish, Clare Booth Luce, Clara Sipprell and Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield, recently remembered in a New York Times article and one of Pen and Brush’s earliest members, who with her husband, helped organize a group of interested NYC citizens to form the Municipal Art Society in 1893.

In 1965, Pen and Brush became a publicly supported charitable nonprofit, moving away from social activities and other characteristics of a private membership club. Today, open to any woman who supports the mission of the organization as well as working artists, Pen and Brush serves over 1,000 women a year from all over the world, providing them with exhibition, performance and reading space, publicity for their work, representation for sales, contests with cash awards, an annual scholarship, workshops, and panel discussions and presentations. Plans for 2009 include establishing a P&B Books imprint for the publication of exhibition catalogs, anthologies and literary work. Pen and Brush is a tax-exempt nonprofit. General membership is $60 a year. Once a general member, any woman may chose to apply for one of the juried memberships (Artist or Professional). Nonmembers are eligible to enter work in nearly all exhibitions, contests, readings and workshops. All exhibitions, concerts and readings are open to the public.