Some art for your Mother’s Day plans. Here’s a list of artwork on the joy (and sorrow) of parenting

For Mother’s Day, we rounded up a collection of works connected to motherhood on view in museums and other venues around Philadelphia, from lighthearted paintings to sentimental photographs.

Some the artwork reveals how the artists view and depict their own mothers; others reflect intimate nursing moments, the loving gaze of a parent, the pain of losing a child, and the pride in revolutionary mother-activists.

The Barnes features many takes on mother-child relationships in painting, sculpture, and photography. In “Sue Williamson & Lebohang Kganye: Tell Me What You Remember,” which focuses on works by two contemporary South African artists, Williamson praises revolutionary women who resisted police and marched in demonstrations against apartheid in her photo series “All Our Mothers.”

Of course, the museum’s Impressionist darling Pierre-Auguste Renoir paints motherhood in various scenarios, from a woman teaching a young girl to write (Writing Lesson) to a mother leading her children to fish for mussels (Mussel-Fishers at Berneval). Also, check out Edouard Manet’s Laundry.

Two sculptures at the Barnes depict mothers nursing their children. In 1916, Renoir sculpted his wife, Aline Charigot Renoir, who had recently died. Mother and Child depicts his wife nursing their firstborn son. The other sculpture is a statuette of ancient Egyptian god Isis with son Horus, whom she had to birth and raise in secret to protect him from a murderous uncle.

Legendary photographer Diane Arbus saw young mother Marylin Dauria on New York City’s subway in 1966, and her Elizabeth Taylor hairstyle drew Arbus’ fascination. A few months later, she captured Dauria and her high school sweetheart, Richard, in A young Brooklyn family going for a Sunday outing, N.Y.C. The photograph is part of the PMA’s “House of Photographs: The Kasakoff-Adams Collection” exhibit from the personal collection of anthropologists Alice Kasakoff Adams and John W. Adams.

After June 10, “The Artist’s Mother: Whistler & Philadelphia” exhibition, examining James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s famous portrait of his mother, will be on view.

The Woodmere’s current exhibit, “Kidding Around: Children in Art from Woodmere’s Collection,” highlighting various depictions of childhood from its permanent collection, runs through May 14. There are also especially adorable paintings of kids and their dogs. French painter Gustave Doyen’s The First Born captures the loving gaze of parents with their newborn in a 19th-century Renaissance-style portrait.

In Portrait of Mrs. Carles and Sara, Philadelphia-born modernist painter Arthur B. Carles painted his mother and sister working together to stitch white fabric.

Woodmere also contains many works by Violet Oakley, including early 1900 murals Man and Science and The Child and Tradition. The artist often painted her mother, using her as a model, and she is present in both these murals.

Though not about motherhood specifically, the AAMP-PAFA exhibit “Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America” features two artists who are mother and son. Photographer Deborah Willis and conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas have separate artwork on display. Thomas is one of the artists behind Question Bridge: Black Males, 2012, a five-channel video installation. Willis welcomes visitors in the museum entrance with Facing the Rising Sun, 2022, also a video work, accompanied by a wall of historical photographs.

PAFA’s Annual Student Exhibition begins Mother’s Day weekend and graduate student Katya Dennison, originally from Florida, is showing her detailed copy of Cecilia Beaux’s Les derniers jours d’enfance, which she painted for a “Painting from the Collection” course. Beaux painted her sister and nephew, and who gifted his aunt’s painting to PAFA. The original work is part of PAFA’s collection but is not currently on display.

Two exhibits from Mural Arts examine the toll of gun violence in Philadelphia. On May 11 at 11 a.m., “SHOT: We the Mothers” opens at First United Methodist Church Germantown, and it will run through spring. The show features photographs by Kathy Shorr of 51 mothers in the Philadelphia area whose children died from gun violence. Shorr took the portraits at locations that were special to each child.

On May 12, Zarinah Lomax’s art organization, the Apologues, will show “A Mother’s Love,” bringing painted portraits of 55 families who lost children to shootings to the City Hall Courtyard. It will be a one-day event from noon to 3 p.m.

Among the stunning sculptures of Auguste Rodin, one marble work focuses on a mother-child pair. The 1891 sculpture Young Mother in the Grotto, part of The Gates of Hell, shows a mother shielding her baby from the elements. Both the marble sculpture and the plaster cast are on view.