It is an open secret that many museums, large and small, owe the strength of their collections to women patrons, yet few scholars to date have studied women as serious art collectors and tastemakers. Biographies exist of individuals from Catherine the Great to Peggy Guggenheim, but the collection and arrangement of beautiful things was a more widespread pastime among women than biographers suggest. The most deeply historicized, contextualized study of women patrons thus far concerns...