Bettye W. Harwell is a vibrant 98 year old with a long career as a fine artist that continues to this day.  She is a long time resident of Bellevue, Tennessee and is well known in Nashville’s community of artists, art collectors and patrons of the visual arts. Admirers of her work include more than a few of Nashville’s most talented artists.

The exhibit contains 21 artistically-rendered portraits of cis-gender women of earlier eras who “passed” as men in order to live their lives in accordance with their deepest sense of who and what they were and pursue careers that were artificially restricted to cis-gendered men by the stereotypes of the relevant societies.

This exhibit highlights the artificial nature of socially-determined gender assignments when it comes to work, dress, romance and family life.  The exhibit underscores this point with a depiction of the “third gender” of a Native American tribe which included cis-gender males as well as cis-gender females whose social roles were not biologically defined or constrained.