Letta Crapo Smith, founding member

Letta Crapo-Smith, a key figure in the eventual establishment of the Detroit Museum of Art (now the Detroit Institute of Arts), is one of the most celebrated of the founders of DSWPS.  She had the best training available in the United States and spent a number of years studying and painting in Japan, Sicily, France, Holland, and England. Crapo-Smith was the first Detroit woman to have a picture accepted by the Paris Salon, and her 1902 painting, “The First Birthday,” once hung at the Louvre. (It is now in the Nurses’ Home founded in 1912 in Flint and now part of the Hurley Medical Center). She was awarded the bronze medal at the St Louis Exposition in 1904. Her work was shown in New York, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and can be found in many private collections. Her grandfather, Henry Crapo, served as governor of Michigan.