It was considered a daring decision when Mary Cassatt, born into a privileged household in Philadelphia, joined the French Impressionists in 1877. She was the only American to exhibit with the renegades. But it was in Paris that Cassatt found acceptance as an artist. Her paintings were of women performing ordinary tasks, going about their lives—offering a glimpse into their unseen private moments. What seemed basic and domestic became radical when pictured on a canvas. The Art Institute of Chicago marks the centennial of Cassatt’s death by examining her most ambitious period of work, which focuses on mothers and children. Over 75 paintings, prints, and a mural commissioned for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition illustrate how Cassatt brought a whole range of female experience into the light. —Maggie Turner