Influential Women of the CMA: Emery May Holden Norweb

Main pages:

Individual women:

1949 - 1981 CMA trustee; First honorary trustee for life, 1972

1962 - 1971 CMA Board of Trustees President

• Here various memberships at the CMA include:
• CMA Junior Council, CMA Musart Society, Print Club of Cleveland, Cleveland Society for Contemporary Art, Textile Arts Club

Her known organizational connections with unknown dates are as follows:

• Royal Numismatic Society, Fellow; This could be the same as or different than being a chairperson of the American Numismatic Society of London
• New York Coin Club, Member
• Cleveland Coin Club, Member
• Cleveland Institute of Art, Trustee
• Western Reserve Historical Society, Trustee
• Holden Arboretum, Trustee and President
• Smithsonian Institution, Honorary Fellow
• Garden Club of Cleveland, President
• Garden Center of Cleveland (now the Cleveland Botanical Garden), Trustee and President

This information was gathered from items in Norweb's clipping file. Information may be missing or not entirely accurate due to age.

Emery May Holden Norweb (1895 - 1984) was the first woman to serve as the president of the Board of Trustees at the CMA, and the second woman ever to lead a museum board in the United States. She served on the board for 32 years total, 9 of which comprised of her tenure as the president. Though she had a long standing background as a collector and benefactor to the museum, when asked to be the president she thought "the foundations of the museum had probably collapsed... [but] the museum was so well established and was doing so well by then that I felt I couldn't do much damage" (From an Interview with Wilma Salisbury, The Flamboyant Collector, which can be found in Norweb's clipping file).

However, Norweb had quite the successful tenure as president. Not only did she help usher in the 50th anniversary of the museum, but she was also involved in the plans for the museum second expansion in the 1970s and facilitating the board meetings for the creation of the Joint Program with Case Western Reserve University. Her contributions were so impactful that in 1981, when she requested to no longer be reelected as a member of the board of trustees, she was elected, instead, as the first Honorary Trustee for life.

Aside from serving as president, she also contributed many pieces of art to the collection. Since she was a part of the Holden family, who was deeply connected with the museum since it's foundation, art collecting was second nature. Two of her greatest contributions were the coin collection donated by her and her husband and the Pre-Columbian art she donated which served as the foundation for that department.

Even outside of the museum, she was deeply involved in many organizations throughout Cleveland and internationally.

For a broader biographical sketch, see the miscellaneous resources.

Though Norweb was not a curator, as an avid and long-standing contributor to the museum, many pieces in the CMA's collection are tied to her and her husband in some way or another. Below, you can find more information about the pieces in the museum relating to her.

For more information on each of the acquisitions, feel free to click the title and visit the Collection Online page. There you can find more information which includes the known bibliography on our pieces.

Below are objects that were acquired during her time as president. (Taken from A Resolution of Appreciation to Emery May Norweb)