She was the life partner of acclaimed muralist Violet Oakley and served as the vice-president, president, and curator of the Woodmere Art Museum in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1940 to 1978.

[5][6] Emerson began her art education at a young age, studying with Olaf Branner from the Department of Architecture at Cornell University when she was only twelve years old.

[5] By age fifteen, she had enrolled in classes at the Art Institute of Chicago, later studying with John Vanderpoel and Thomas Wood Stevens.

Other students studying at the academy at the time included Cecilia Beaux, Violet Oakley, Hugh Breckenridge, and Daniel Garber.

[5][12] She chose as her subjects a Greek myth, in which King Minos' daughter Ariadne, after being deserted by Theseus, is discovered by the god of wine, Dionysus.

[13] Tempera studies for the work were shown in the sixteenth annual exhibition of water colors at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1918.

She actively researched items in the permanent collection and organized the paperwork associated with each piece of art; she also solicited information from visiting artists.

[18] The studio was opened to the public as a kind of museum, and Emerson organized various activities there, including concerts, exhibitions, poetry readings, and lectures on American art and illustration.