"Here She Is…"

Did you dream of becoming Miss America, sashaying down the runway, waving to the crowd, and wearing that glittering crown?

The annual pageant was launched on September 8, 1921, when Margaret Gorman of Washington, D.C., was crowned in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The Miss America Organization is the single largest provider of scholarships to women in the world. You can bet that millions will tune in to this year's event on October 14.

Malcah Zeldis's version of the Miss America Beauty Pageant captures the event's excitement by highlighting its swimsuit competition and the winner's runway walk. A self-taught artist who began to paint in her late thirties, she is now a widely exhibited contemporary painter.

Source: Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. Made with Passion: The Hemphill Folk Art Collection in the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: For the National Museum of American Art by the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990).

Pictured: Malcah Zeldis, born 1931, Miss America Beauty Pageant, 1973, oil on masonite, 48 x 40 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr.