WOMANHOUSE: Cradle of Feminist Art by Sandra Sider

WOMANHOUSE: Cradle of Feminist Art
January 30 - February 28, 1972
by Sandra Sider

Although female artists were certainly recognized in this country before the end of the 1960s, their artistic styles, for the most part, conformed to the dominant modes of male artists, notably Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism during the 1950s and 1960s. The content of the works of female artists had little basis in women's history or women's experiences. During the latter 1960s, Judy Chicago, for example, was painting large-format lifesavers in colors of the rainbow. Miriam Schapiro was painting bright geometric shapes. In retrospect, both artists incorporated several of these works into the background of their nascent feminism. Chicago called it "cunt art." Chicago's first work to use this aggressively feminist term in the title was Click Cunts of 1969.(1) At the end of that year, she officially changed her name from Judy Gerowitz to Judy Chicago, divesting herself "of all names imposed upon her through male social dominance."(2)

Chicago and Schapiro engendered the feminist art movement that exploded in southern California in the early 1970s.(3) Schapiro had moved there in 1967 when her husband Paul Brach became chair of the Art Department at the University of California, San Diego, in La Jolla. In 1970 he was appointed dean of the newly established California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts), located in Valencia (then about an hour's drive from Los Angeles). Brach had accepted the position with the condition that his wife would become a member of the faculty. Lloyd Hamrol, Chicago's husband at the time, was teaching at Cal Arts. Chicago herself was in Fresno in the fall of 1970, having accepted a one-year teaching position at Fresno State College to establish a Feminist Art Program. Her purpose there was to create a studio environment exclusively for female students, interviewing and then selecting only those students whom she believed would develop into serious artists. Many of the early classes in Chicago's program functioned as "consciousness-raising" seminars, before feminists began using the term.

Schapiro and Chicago first met at a dinner held in the home of Allan Kaprow, where they discussed the possibility of Schapiro lecturing at Fresno State. Schapiro spoke about her ideas of feminism to Chicago’s students in Fresno, and after the lecture Chicago and her students had a party for their guest in the five thousand-square-foot studio that the class had built in an old Community Theatre. That renovation work foreshadowed the construction in Womanhouse the following year. The students benefited from Schapiro's critiques, and several students presented performances with feminist themes, as they would later do in Womanhouse.(4)

Schapiro and Chicago began to talk about working as a team to establish a Feminist Art Program at Cal Arts, a goal fulfilled in the fall of 1971. Moreover, several Cal Arts students in a research seminar had been amassing information on women artists for an archive at Cal Arts. Schapiro's assistant made slides for visual documentation, and the first illustrated database of women's art was created. (By the Fall term of 1972, Arlene Raven had been hired to teach art history at Cal Arts, including art history "from a woman's point of view" for the Feminist Art Program.(5) Cal Arts was a very "happening" place in the early 1970s. Sheila de Bretteville, for example, established a Feminist Design Program there. (In 1973 she would found the Feminist Studio Workshop in Los Angeles, along with Chicago and Arlene Raven.) Male artists involved with Cal Arts included John Baldessari, Eric Fischl, Allan Kaprow, and David Salle. The school had a well-connected board of trustees, including people involved with the film industry, and the head of the school was married to a member of the Disney family.

The purpose of the Feminist Art Program at Cal Arts was to "help women restructure their personalities to be more consistent with their desires to be artists and to help them build their art making out of their experiences as women."(6) Both Chicago and Schapiro believed that the art world stifled the creativity of female artists, forcing them to function within uninspiring male paradigms. Chicago's classes at Fresno State were the first instance on the West Coast of female students making art within an all-female environment, and women artists came from Los Angeles and other cities to experience the art works and performances. Schapiro and Chicago realized that they were involved in an historic endeavor at Cal Arts, and they wanted their major project for the school year to be memorable. Art historian Paula Harper, who taught at the school, suggested that the students might collaborate on installations in an abandoned house, which would be called Womanhouse. Chicago and Schapiro functioned as facilitators, encouraging their twenty-one students to work out their own ideas (Figure 1) (see Appendix I, List of Names). Initially, the classes met in homes of the students because the Cal Arts space was under construction.(7) The completed project would feature feminist art by the students, Chicago, and Schapiro, as well as by three local artists invited to participate in the project (Sherry Brody, Carol Edison Mitchell, and Wanda Westcoast).

After searching Los Angeles for an abandoned house that was large enough for the project and that could be used without charge, the group located a dilapidated house at 553 Mariposa Avenue in Hollywood. The elderly woman who owned it was intrigued with the concept of Womanhouse, and the demolition of the house was postponed until the spring of 1972. Members of the Feminist Art Program had three months to renovate the building and complete their installations. Both Chicago and Schapiro have emphasized that Womanhouse was a monumental undertaking. Their essay in the 32-page exhibition catalogue indicated the frustration and anger of the students as they were pushed almost beyond their limits of endurance.(8)

Most of the Cal Arts students lived in or near Valencia, and several of them had jobs. Working each day on cleaning and repairing Womanhouse, they suffered from sleep deprivation and exhaustion. In addition, much of the work was not "art work," but rather general repair work, such as carpentry, plastering, glazing windows, and rewiring. Some of the students were learning these skills as they did the jobs, with Chicago especially pushing them to finish. Planning their installations was also stressful, as the group sat in a circle on the kitchen floor. Tensions concerning their mothers rose to the surface as they discussed their feelings about that particular room. Schapiro described the atmosphere in her article on Womanhouse published in the Spring 1972 issue of Art Journal: "it became obvious that the kitchen was a battleground where women fought with their mothers for their appropriate share of comfort and love. It was an arena where ostensibly the horn of plenty overflowed, but where in actuality the mother was acting out her bitterness over being imprisoned in a situation from which she could not bring herself to escape, and from which society would not encourage such an escape."(9)

Finally, in mid-January, the installations were almost completed and people were beginning to come view the house. It was opened to the public on January 30th, 1972, and closed on February 28th. The annual conference of the College Art Association had ended in San Francisco on January 29th, and some of the attendees came to Los Angeles afterwards, with Womanhouse among the exhibitions that they visited.(11) Nearly 10,000 people visited Womanhouse, and Faith Wilding would comment five years later about how the collaboration was "a valuable education for the students, who learned how to give tours, to articulate what they were doing, and to maintain their own vision in the face of criticism."(11) The exhibition received coverage on national television and in popular magazines, such as Time (Figure 2, where the review was entitled "Bad-Dream House").(12) It was also reviewed in the Los Angeles Times during the final week of the exhibition.(13) With the help of Daniel Selznik, who was on the Cal Arts board of trustees, documentary filmmaker Joanna Demetrakis received a grant from the American Film Council to film Womanhouse. The exhibition had eighteen display areas, including three bathrooms, two closets, and the garden behind the house. Because a space was needed for performances, the living room area was left open. The Womanhouse catalogue, designed by Sheila de Bretteville, depicted Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro on the cover, seated at the top of the steps leading to the house (Figure 3).

Visitors approached the house by walking along a pathway with tall, leafy bushes on either side.*(14) The exterior of the house was painted white, with "WOMANHOUSE" in small sans-serif letters discreetly stenciled over the handle to the front door.* The Nurturant Kitchen, created by Vicki Hodgetts, Susan Frazier, and Robin Weltsch, was one of the most memorable rooms (Figure 4 ). Painted completely in bright pink, including the canned good and appliances, the room had vacu-formed plastic curtains by Wanda Westcoast, one of the invited artists. Aprons were suspended on pegs along one wall. The insides of the drawers featured collages of exotic locales that represented the fantasy travel that might have been in the minds of women trapped at home in their kitchens. There were also several portraits of notable women, such as Angela Davis, with definite political overtones.* Visitors especially noticed the spongy sunny-side eggs fastened to the ceiling that morphed to breasts as they went down the wall and then became eggs once again as they approached the stove. The breasts were soft and could be squeezed by visitors.* Linda Nochlin in a recent interview said that she remembers the kitchen as "very impressive."(15)

The other room connected with the nurturing theme of food was the dining room, the most elaborate group effort of the entire project (Figure 5). The installation was by Miriam Schapiro, Faith Wilding, Beth Bachenheimer, Karen LeCocq, Robin Mitchell, and invited artist Sherry Brody. Everything in the dining room was produced by the group, from the vinyl chandelier to the bread-sculpture fruit. The focal point of the room was a mural that reproduced a still life by the nineteenth-century American artist Anna Claypoole Peale (1791- 1878) (Figure 6 ). Schapiro's idea "was to introduce them [the students] to the Peale family, especially to the women who were artists."(16) Obviously, the women liked the vaginal connotation of the sliced watermelon with its centric imagery. Nochlin (in the same interview) said, "What really surprised me was that there was not any sort of really wild painting." But then she remarked that the Peale mural was "probably more appropriate." The Womanhouse artists, by copying Peale's painting, were not only celebrating her talent but also positioning themselves within a legacy of American women artists. While working on Womanhouse, one of the students, Nancy Youdelman, (17) found a book in a thrift shop about the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Judy Chicago was struck by the fact that the Exposition had included a woman's building, designed by a female architect, and featuring a three-part mural by Mary Cassatt entitled Modern Woman. The Womanhouse artists had discovered an historical precedent for their current artistic undertaking, even though the content was vastly different.

Faith Wilding's Womb Room, also entitled Crocheted Environment and Web Room (Figure 7), was, in Arlene Raven's words, "a representation of not only a site but a biological passage." (18) Wilding herself explained the crocheted structure as "a contemporary response to the round- shaped shelters built by female ancestors for themselves and their families."(19) In contrast to the expansive enclosure of Womb Room, the three bathrooms of Womanhouse packed powerful messages into rather small spaces. The Nightmare Bathroom by Robbin Schiff had a female figure constructed of sand in the tub and all the bottles filled with sand (Figure 8). Part of the figure was worn away during the exhibition because people could not resist touching her face and hair. Camille Grey's Lipstick Bathroom was completely painted in bright red, including all the toiletry items and more than one hundred tubes of phallic lipstick tightly packed on the shelves (Figure 9).*

The most famous bathroom, however, was Judy Chicago's Menstruation Bathroom, which contained a good number of the 10,000 tampons that most women discard within a lifetime (Figure 10). There were also "feminine hygiene" products that were just beginning to enter the market, such as a can of Revlon vaginal spray.*(20) Visitors were not permitted to enter the bathroom, but had to view it through a sheet of gauze suspended in the doorway. Colin Eisler, who went by himself to see Womanhouse, said in a recent interview: "I will never forget it!" Interestingly, he has conflated the Menstruation Bathroomwith the Lipstick Bathroom, recalling that there "was so much red." His reaction to these two parts of the exhibition, now fused in his memory, was "visceral, very physical." Demetrakis's film included an interview (in the dining room) about the Menstruation Bathroom with three middle-aged Caucasian men dressed in business suits. Their level of discomfort was palpable as they struggled to define the symbolism of the bathroom. One man used vaguely humorous remarks to veil his embarrassment, finally blurting out, "A lot of the house is amusing, and this is not amusing!"

Color, as seen above in the kitchen and bathrooms, was an important component of Womanhouse. Three bedrooms were painted, one in trompe l'oeil. Robin Mitchell created an abstract-expressionist bedroom (Figure 11). "The bed, the chest, the chair, the vase of flowers, the ceiling, the floor, windows, walls, all are covered with paint gesturally marked as if the artist's hand was compelled to touch it all."(21) Mira Schor's Red Moon Room depicted a self-portrait of the artist in a moody landscape. She described the room as "the dark side of myself."(22) Stark white "bones" contributed to the atmosphere of the Garden Jungle (in the back yard of the house) by Paula Longendyke (Figure 12). She created several "prehistoric" skeletons that dominated the space.* Contrasting with the skeletons were the Necco Wafers whimsically painted in pastels by Christine Rush on the ground itself, so that "the ground would sort of float in the garden and seem unreal."(23)

Female mannequins appeared in two of the installations, including the Bridal Staircaseby Kathy Huberland (Figure 13). At the top of the staircase the smiling bride was decked in flowers and ribbons, all covered in a white veil, but then her white satin train descended the stairs and turned to gray. Following the train, in Schapiro's words, "we see her--dirty, gray, used--crashed headlong into the bottom wall, the entire front half of her body invisible."(24) Huberland described the bride as "an offering," as if she were on an altar.(25) The female form was also important for Sandra Orgel's Linen Closet, with a woman organized and contained as neatly as her linens (Figure 14). In the process, she was decapitated. Beth Bachenheimer's colorful Shoe Closet containing the means by which women might attempt to step into another identity, was the first in a long line of feminist art works focusing on shoes (Figure 15).(26) Many of the shoes were colorfully (but not neatly) painted.*

Clothing and costume also played a crucial role in Leah's Room, created by Karen LeCocq and Nancy Youdelman. Inspired by the novel Chéri, Colette's story about an aging courtesan, this heavily perfumed bedroom was filled with antiques (Figure 16.). There were also objects that may have been meant as symbols, such as a gilded bird cage. A woman (LeCocq) slowly and silently applied cosmetics and then removed them, causing many women to weep openly as they observed the performance. The cosmetics were applied thickly, quite lavishly.* In Chéri, the lover for whom Leah prepares herself is a vain young fortune hunter, who in the end abandons her when she loses her outer beauty. The novel's story gave added poignancy to the performance.(27)

Miriam Schapiro's work for The Dollhouse, in which she was assisted by Sherry Brody, marked a turning point in her career (Figure 17).(28) As the artist explained to Thalia Gouma-Petersen, " it made her see art-making from another perspective--from 'the eyes of a woman.' Dollhouse, to some a 'frivolous' work, released Schapiro from the previous imperatives to create mainstream art … . She transformed her private life into a public act, validating the traditional activities of women, which she had, until then, dismissed."(29)

Two artists created solo performances based on the repetitive actions of house work, similar to LeCocq's actions of applying make-up and then removing it. Christine Rush scrubbed a floor, pouring water from a bucket. The monotony of this work was described by Arlene Raven: "Back and forth, over and over, her arms circle and circle the floor in continuous motion scrubbing with a brush and plenty of elbow grease."(30) Sandra Orgel stood mutely at an ironing board (Figure 18), endlessly ironing a large piece of plasticized fabric with a cold iron, and then tightly folding it to resemble the sheets in her Linen Closet.*(31) She became both artist and subject, presenting a new perspective on the paintings of a woman ironing executed by male artists. Shawnee Wollenmann performed in the brightly-colored Nursery where she had created adult-sized toys and furniture, occasionally riding the rocking horse* in what she described as an "androgynous" space.(32)

Womanhouse also included several group performances. The most notorious was the Cock and Cunt Play written by Judy Chicago (Figure 19). It was performed by Faith Wilding, who flaunted a giant penis, and Janice Lester, who wore a giant round vagina (foreshadowing the plates in Chicago's Dinner Party). They spoke in time to the measured beat of a drum, marching and holding their bodies stiffly, like marionettes with no will of their own.* Other notable performances were the Birth Trilogy, comparable to wiccan ceremonies (Figure 20), and Faith Wilding's solo performance in Waiting, which she also wrote (Figure 21). Waiting helped to spread the message of feminism because Wilding generously opened her copyright to allow anyone to perform the skit at any time for any reason. All these pieces were performed for a women-only audience shortly before Womanhouse was open to the general public. The responses ranged from uproarious laughter to screaming and sobs. As Suzanne Lacy wrote in a recent email message, " it was always emotional for women when they first began to see other women talking about formerly hidden experiences."(33)

The creative process of self-exploration and self-realization was the main purpose of Womanhouse and of the Feminist Art Program. Arlene Raven explained the artists' experience in Womanhouse as a powerful confrontation with issues of identity, in which the students learned that "what we 'make' of our lives is an invention of meaning and human triumph or despair. And no one else can take up for us the burden of being ourselves."(34) After the exhibition closed, some of the art was sold at an auction to benefit the Program. Several artists kept their pieces, or at least what they could remove from the house. The Dollhouse was later purchased by the Smithsonian, after Schapiro added a pediment and shutters.(35) Faith Wilding's Womb Room unfortunately was stolen during the final days of the exhibition. Several of the Womanhouse artists were interviewed during the mid-to- late 1990s by Ulrike Müller, a video artist who participated in the Whitney Independent Study program in 2002-2003.(36) Her research project involving the Cal Arts Feminist Art Program, called "re:tracing," was partially supported by the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles. Although most reactions from the artists were positive, at least one (Judy Huddleston) felt that the "over-idealistic values" of the Program did not adequately prepare her for the economic issues confronting female artists in the 1970s. Sandra Orgel (now Crooker) remarked that she was nineteen years old in 1971 and the Program made a "great impression" on her. She continues "to take tremendous pride in women's strength, development, and accomplishments." Robin Mitchell, who explained that it took "a tremendous amount of strength on my part to find my identity as an artist" has mixed feelings about Womanhouse and the Cal Arts Program: "At times it seemed chaotic, volatile, and sometimes wrong directed, even though it was exciting and inspiring. Twenty years later history is trying to tie it into a neat package. It was not."

One year after Womanhouse closed, Lucy Lippard prophetically recognized the inherent power of feminist aesthetics in an article published by Ms. magazine: "Many women artists have organized, are shedding their shackles, proudly untying the apron strings--and, in some cases, keeping the apron on, flaunting it, turning it into art."(37) Although Womanhouse can never be recreated, and certainly would not elicit the same reactions today, a few of the rooms have been recreated for special exhibitions. In 1995, for example, the Bronx Museum of the Arts exhibited The Dollhouse , with Wilding crocheting a Womb Room , Chicago recreating the Menstruation Bathroom , Bachenheimer recreating the Shoe Closet , and Sherry Brody lending Lingerie Pillows for the exhibition Division of Labor: 'Women's Work' in Contemporary Art . The feminist spirit of Womanhouse lives on in the web site Womenhouse , which was inspired by the groundbreaking 1972 exhibition. Faith Wilding is among the participants in this collaborative site featuring virtual rooms and domestic spaces. Womenhouse catapults the issues raised by Womanhouse into the twenty-first century, within "a cyberpolitics that addresses the multivalent vicissitudes of identity formation and domesticity."(38)


Footnotes

(1) Jenni Sorkin,Minimal/Liminal: Judy Chicago and Minimalism: 1965-1973 (Santa Fe: Lew Allen Contemporary, 2004), p. 9.

(2) Judy Chicago, Through the Flower: My Struggles as A Woman Artist (New York: Penguin Books, 1975), p. 63 (part of the exhibition notice in Chicago's solo show curated by Dextra Frankel at California State College at Fullerton).

(3) Judy Chicago's archives at the Schlesinger Library for the History of Women in America (Harvard University) have recently been catalogued, according to an email from her of Sept. 27, 2004. The direct link via the Internet is http://oasis.harvard.edu/html/sch00326.html.

(4) Chicago, op. cit., p. 84.

(5) In a phone interview of Nov. 9, 2004, Arlene Raven remarked that when she was a student in art history classes, Mary Cassatt was the only female artist whose work was included in the curriculum. While teaching at Cal Arts, Raven spent many hours in southern California looking through stores such as Acres of Books (in Long Beach) to collect books that included women artists.

(6) Linda Nochlin, "Foreword," in Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Miriam Schapiro: Shaping the Fragments of Art and Life(New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999), p. 10 (quoting the Womanhouse catalogue essay by Chicago and Schapiro).

(7) Faith Wilding, By Our Own Hands: The Women Artist's [sic] Movement, Southern California 1970-1976 (Santa Monica: Double X, 1977), p. 25.

(8) Chicago, Judy and Miriam Schapiro. "Womanhouse" (Valencia,CA: California Institute of the Arts, 1971), pp. (2-3). See Appendix III.

(9) Miriam Schapiro, "Education of Women as Artists: Project Womanhouse," Art Journal 31 (no. 3, Spring 1972), p. 269. Interestingly, in the spirit of maintaining collaborative credit for the project, Schapiro did not stipulate which artists created which rooms.

(10) Colin Eisler, interview at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York, Sept. 27, 2004.

(11) Faith Wilding, op. cit., p. 28.

(12) Sandra Burton, "Bad-Dream House," Time Magazine: Special Issue, The American Woman (March 20, 1972), p. 77 (illustrating the Shoe Closet, Womb Room, and Nurturant Kitchen). This issue is quite valuable as a document of the women's movement, featuring articles on women and various subjects, such as law, medicine, and education. On the same page as the Womanhouse review is a "Situation Report" on women artists and architects. As a footnote to history, the bizarre juxtaposition of advertisements (probably placed months before the special issue was announced) and articles is notable. One page before the Womanhouse review, for example, is a full-page cigarette ad depicting the Marlboro man on his horse. The full-page ad on the inside front cover for Stouffer's frozen spinach soufflé has this bit of deathless prose: "Tonight you're having chicken again. And the family always likes it a lot. But, last week you used up your last idea on how to make it different. It's a good day for Stouffer's."

(13) William Wilson, "Lair of Female Creativity," Los Angeles Times, February 21, 1972.

(14) Joanna Demetrakis,Womanhouse [color video] (New York: Women Make Movies, [1996?], VHS conversion of the 1972 motion picture directed and edited by her). My descriptions of Womanhouse based on viewing the video are indicated in the remainder of this paper by an asterisk. More than half of the film documents the performances, showing Cock and Cunt and Waiting in their entirety, as well as most of theBirth Trilogy. Although most of the Womanhouse rooms are in the video, several are depicted only fleetingly. The film has a group assessment of the Womanhouse experience by the students and Judy Chicago, recorded the evening that the exhibition closed. The conversations include Chicago's advice that one must "stop the process of the outside world" to make art.

(15) Linda Nochlin, interview at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York, Sept. 28, 2004.

(16) Miriam Schapiro, email of Nov. 21, 2004.

(17) Faith Wilding, op. cit., p. 27.

(18) Arlene Raven, "Womanhouse," in Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, eds. The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), p. 55.

(19) Faith Wilding, caption to illustration of her piece, in Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, eds. The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), p. 63.

(20) The first "feminine hygiene deodorant spray" was marketed by Massengill in 1970, as noted in Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 153.

(21) Schapiro, op. cit. p. 269.

(22) Mira Schor, "Red Moon Room," in Womanhouse[Valencia, CA: California Institute of the Arts, 1971], p. (17).

(23) Christine Rush, "Necco Wafers," in Womanhouse [Valencia, CA: California Institute of the Arts, 1971], p. (24).

(24) Schapiro, op. cit., p. 27

(25) Kathy Huberland, "Bridal Staircase," in Womanhouse [Valencia, CA: California Institute of the Arts, 1971], p. (14).

(26) Raven, op. cit., p. 63.

(27) Gislind Nabakowski, Frauen in der Kunst, vol. 1 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1980), p. 227.

(28) Demetrakis's film shows very close details of the Dollhouse rooms.

(29) Gouma-Peterson, op.cit., pp. 70-71.

(30) Arlene Raven, Crossing Over: Feminism and Art of Social Concern (Ann Arbor and London: U.M.I. Research Press, 1988), p. 25.

(31) Gislind Nabokowski, op. cit. p. 232.

(32) Shawnee Wollenman, "The Nursery," in Womanhouse [Valencia, CA: California Institute of the Arts, 1971], p. (15).

(33) Suzanne Lacy, email message of Oct. 23, 2004.

(34) Arlene Raven, Crossing Over, p. 111.

(35) As of October 2006, The Dollhouse will be displayed in the new Luce Center for sculptural works in the Smithsonian (Miriam Schapiro, autograph letter signed to the author, Aug. 9, 2006, p. 3) (36) The interviews can be accessed via the web site http://www.calarts.edu/~thefword.

(37) Lucy Lippard, "Household Images in Art," Ms. 1 (no. 9, March 1973), p. 22.

(38) http://cmp1.ucr.edu/womenhouse (opening page).


APPENDIX I LIST OF NAMES

Paula Harper (suggested the project)

Teachers:
*Judy Chicago
*Miriam Schapiro

Students:
*Beth Bachenheimer
#Susan Frazier
Camille Grey
Vicky Hodgett
Kathy Huberland
*Judy Huddleston
*Janice Johnson
*Karen LeCocq
*Janice Lester
*Paula Longendyke
Ann Mills
*Robin Mitchell
*Sandra Orgel
*Jan Oxenburg
*Christine Rush
Marsha Salisbury
*Robbin Schiff
*Mira Schor
Robin Weltsch
*Faith Wilding
Shawnee Wollenmann
*Nancy Youdelman

Invited fiber artists:
*Sherry Brody
Carol Edison Mitchell
Wanda Westcoast

*artist or writer today
#art consultant


APPENDIX II

GENERAL CHRONOLOGY: WOMEN'S MOVEMENT

(in collaboration with Genevieve Hendricks and Kate Moomaw)

1963 The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
1964 Civil Rights Act includes gender among its anti-discrimination clauses
1964 Margaret Chase Smith is the first woman to run for President
1966 NOW (National Organization for Women) is founded
1967 ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) introduced in the Senate
1967 New York Radical Women
1968 WITCH
1968 Redstockings manifesto
1968 First National Women's Liberation Conference
1968 Women's Liberation movement trashing bras at Miss America pageant
1969 WAR (Women Artists in Revolution) organized to oppose discrimination against women in the art world
1970 Sexual Politics by Kate Millett
1970 First Washington march for women's equality
1970 Ad Hoc Women Artists' Committee forms from Art Workers Coalition
1970 Redstockings Artists founded by Pat Mainardi, Irene Peslikis, Marjorie Kramer, and Lucia Vernarelli
1970 WSABAL (Women Students and Artists for Black Art Liberation) by Faith Ringgold and her daughters Michele and Barbara Wallace
1970 LACWA (Los Angeles Council of Women Artists) organizes protests
1971 Linda Nochlin's "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" published in ARTnews
1971 National Women's Political Caucus
1971 WIA (Women in the Arts), New York City
1971 Lucy Lippard's "Sexual Politics, Art Style" in Art in America
1971 Miriam Schapiro and Judy Chicago begin Feminist Art Program at California Institute of the Arts (Los Angeles)
1972 Womanhouse exhibition in Los Angeles, open to the public for one month (Jan. 30-Feb. 28), with nearly 10,000 visitors
1972 WEB (West-East Bag) networking women artists on both coasts
1972 Ms. Magazine founded, with editor Gloria Steinem
1972 WCA (Women's Caucus for Art) of the College Art Association
1972 A.I.R. Gallery founded, New York City
1972 Women's Interart Center, New York City, with open exhibition program
1973 Women Choose Women exhibition at the New York Cultural Center
1973 Feminist Art Journal founded
1973 Soho 20, women's cooperative gallery, New York City
1973 Roe v. Wade passes into law
1973 Woman's Building opens, Los Angeles (others then open in other cities)
1975 Women Artists Newsletter founded
1976 Woman Artists: 1550-1950 opens at LACMA and then tours in U.S.
1977 Heresies magazine in New York and Chrysalis in Los Angeles
1977 Marcia Tucker opens the New Museum of Contemporary Art (after being fired from the Whitney Museum)
1979 Margaret Thatcher elected Prime Minister of Great Britain
1979 Dinner Party by Judy Chicago opens in San Francisco and then tours U.S.
1980 First National Hispanic Feminist Conference
1980 Woman's Art Journal in Knoxville and WARM in Minneapolis
1981 Sandra Day O'Connor first woman justice on the Supreme Court
1982 ERA fails to be ratified by Congress
1982 Sally Ride first American woman in space
1983 Geraldine Ferraro first woman vice-presidential candidate of a major party
1983 Events: En Foco: Heresies Collective exhibition at the New Museum
1984 Difference: On Representation and Sexuality at the New Museum
1985 First actions of the Guerrilla Girls
1987 National Museum of Women in the Arts opens, Washington
1989 600,000 march in Washington for abortion rights and equality
1990 Jenny Holzer first woman to represent U.S. in Venice Biennale
1991 Backlash, The Undeclared War against American Women by Susan Faludi
1992 WAC (Women's Action Coalition) in 35 states
1992 750,000 gather in Washington for the March for Women's Lives
1993 Jocelyn Elders is asked to resign for her position on masturbation (she was the first female surgeon-general)


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bronx Museum of the Arts. "Division of Labor: 'Women's Work' in Contemporary Art. New York: Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1995, pp. 67-69 (exhibition catalogue, reprinting the original 1971 catalogue essay).

Broude, Norma and Mary D. Garrard. "Conversations with Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro,' in Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, eds. The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994, pp. 66-85.

Burnham, Linda Frye. High Performance, Performance, and Me," The Drama Review 30 (no. 1, Spring 1986), pp. 15-51.

Burton, Sandra. "Bad-Dream House," Time Magazine (20 March 1972, "Special Issue: The American Woman"), p 77.

Chicago, Judy. Through the Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist. New York and London: Penguin Books, 1993.

Demetrakis, Joanna. Womanhouse [color video]. New York: Women Make Movies, [1996?] (VHS conversion of the 1972 motion picture directed and edited by her).

Frank, Thomas. The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism.Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998 (see for the marketing of products to women).

Gouma-Peterson, Thalia and Patricia Mathews. "The Feminist Critic of Art History," The Art Bulletin 69 (no. 3, Sept. 1987), pp. 326-357.

______. Miriam Schapiro: Shaping the Fragments of Art and Life. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999.

Harper, Paula. "The First Feminist Art Program: A View from the 1980s," Signs 10 (no. 4: Communities of Women, Summer 1985), pp. 762-781.

Hayes, Jacqueline Genevieve. Representations of Utopias: The Politics of Women's Group Theatres, 1969-1992. Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1994.

Kwon, Miwon. "One Place after Another: Notes on Site Specificity," October 80 (Spring 1997), pp. 85-110.

Lippard, Lucy. "Household Images in Art," Ms. 1 (no. 9, March 1973), p. 22.

Nabakowski, Gislind et al. Frauen in der Kunst. 2 vols. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1980.

Nochlin, Linda. "Miriam Schapiro: Recent Work," Arts Magazine 48 (Nov. 1973), pp. 38-41.

Olsen, Sanne Kofod. "Waiter, There's a Woman in My Soup! On Feminist Art and the History and Distribution of Art in Denmark," published online in the web site http://www.artnode.dk/inserts/text/kofod/main.html.

Raven, Arlene. Crossing Over: Feminism and Art of Social Concern. Ann Arbor and London: U.M.I. Research Press, 1988.

______. "Womanhouse," in Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, eds. The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994, pp. 48-65.

Schapiro, Miriam. "Education of Women as Artists: Project Womanhouse," Art Journal 31 (no. 3, Spring 1972), pp. 268-270.

Schor, Mira. "A Plague of Polemics," Art Journal 50 (no. 4, Winter 1991), pp. 36- 41.

Wawzonek, Donna Lee. Constructions of Home: The Interrelationship between Gendered Exhibition Sites and Contemporary Canadian Installation Art. M.A. thesis, Carleton University, 1997.

Womanhouse. [Valencia, CA: California Institute of the Arts, 1971] (exhibition catalogue).

Wilding, Faith. By Our Own Hands: The Women Artist's [sic] Movement, Southern California 1970-1976 . Santa Monica: Double X, 1977.

______. "The Feminist Art Programs at Fresno and Calarts, 1970-75," in Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, eds. The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994, pp. 32-47.

Womanhouse [exhibition catalogue]. [Valencia: California Institute of the Arts, 1971.]

http://www.calarts.edu/~thefword links to several letters written by Womanhouse participants about their experiences, prompted by an inquiry [after 1998] from artist Ulrike Müller.