It would take the city’s society women to get some movement toward starting an art school. In 1854, Sarah Worthington King Peter organized a group of 18 women, including wives of successful
businessmen Nicholas Longworth, Reuben Springer, and John Kilgour, to form the Ladies’ Academy of Fine Arts (LAFA) with the aim “to aid in the cultivation of public taste” as well as encourage artists and bolster intellectual enjoyment of the arts.
in 1877, many of the same women immediately formed the Women’s Art Museum Association of
Cincinnati (WAMA), again with Elizabeth Perry as president, to advance the cause of the arts in the city.
