“Mary Cassatt, being independent”: Musée d’Orsay opens the major retrospective for the 100th anniversary of the artist’s death

The Musée d’Orsay in Paris opens today, October 6, 2026, the major exhibition “Mary Cassatt, being independent”, the first major retrospective in France devoted entirely to the American Impressionist artist, conceived for the 100th anniversary of her death in 1926. The exhibition, which runs until January 31, 2027, brings together around 80 works from international collections, many of them rarely exhibited in Europe.

Mary Cassatt (1844–1926), the only American in the Impressionist circle, was championed in Paris by Edgar Degas and soon became one of the movement’s central figures, on a par with Degas and Claude Monet. As Artprice reports, the exhibition follows the thread of independence: the artist resolutely chose an autonomous career between the United States and Europe, refusing academic circles and renewing the depiction of women, children and bourgeois interiors.

Known for her warm mother-and-child scenes, Cassatt was also a pioneering feminist who used her influence to support women’s suffrage, convinced that their voice would shape the destinies of nations. Among the exhibition’s surprises is also the digital recreation of her monumental mural “Modern Woman”, created for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

After Paris, versions of the exhibition travel to the National Portrait Gallery in London (March 11 – June 13, 2027) and to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (July 17 – November 28, 2027). The anniversary is also being marked across the Atlantic: the Art Institute of Chicago has opened “Mary Cassatt: After Impressionism” (September 6, 2026 – January 3, 2027), with 75 works from her late career.