Women Artists News (vol. 1, no. 1-vol. 17) was a feminist magazine produced between 1975 and 1992 in New York City.
Established in 1975, Women Artists Newsletter was edited by feminist publisher Cynthia Navaretta [1] under the Midmarch Associates imprint along with a staff of volunteer writers, photographers and graphic designers. Functioning as a space for information exchange and communication for and among a community of women artists, the newsletter published books reviews, articles, museum and gallery listings, event listings, interviews, how-to information, and other assorted news related to art, feminism and women's issues. With the January 1978 issue (vol. 3, no 7) the publication changed its name to Women Artists News, to account for the increasing page count and purview of the publication. Circulation remained around 6000-7000, at one point reaching a readership of 10,000. [2] Contributors throughout the run of the publication included Joyce Kozloff, Lil Picard, Miriam Schapiro, Sylvia Sleigh, Joan Snyder, Nancy Spero and May Stevens, many of whom were also affiliated with the feminist collective and journal Heresies.
Navaretta (b. 1925) was a founding member of the Women's Caucus for Art, the Coalition of Women's Arts Organizations, and Women in the Arts in 1972. In addition to founding Women Artists Newsletter, she is also the author of Guide to Women's Art Organizations and Directory for the Arts (Midmarch Arts Press, 1979). She has edited several volumes of women in the arts and maintains a major archive of women artists in the U.S. since the later 1960s. [3] The archive, housed at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, includes press releases, exhibition and events announcements, catalogs, posters, and newspaper clippings regarding women artists and organizations. Photographs are of women's organizations, events and artists including Faith Ringgold, Susan Schwalb, Lowery Simms, Sari Dienes, Judy Seigel, Audrey Flack, and June Wayne, among others. Correspondence is between Navaretta and various women's art organizations.
The Woman's Building was a non-profit arts and education center located in Los Angeles, California. The Woman's Building focused on feminist art and served as a venue for the women's movement and was spearheaded by artist Judy Chicago, graphic designer Sheila Levrant de Bretteville and art historian Arlene Raven. The center was open from 1973 until 1991. During its existence, the Los Angeles Times called the Woman's Building a "feminist mecca."
Lucy Lippard is an American writer, art critic, activist and curator. Lippard was among the first writers to argue for the "dematerialization" at work in conceptual art and was an early champion of feminist art. She is the author of 21 books on contemporary art and has received numerous awards and accolades from literary critics and art associations.
The feminist art movement in the United States began in the early 1970s and sought to promote the study, creation, understanding and promotion of women's art. First-generation feminist artists include Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, Suzanne Lacy, Judith Bernstein, Sheila de Bretteville, Mary Beth Edelson, Carolee Schneeman, Rachel Rosenthal, and many other women. They were part of the Feminist art movement in the United States in the early 1970s to develop feminist writing and art. The movement spread quickly through museum protests in both New York and Los Angeles, via an early network called W.E.B. that disseminated news of feminist art activities from 1971 to 1973 in a nationally circulated newsletter, and at conferences such as the West Coast Women's Artists Conference held at California Institute of the Arts and the Conference on Women in the Visual Arts, at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C..
SOHO20 Artists, Inc., known as SOHO20 Gallery, was founded in 1973 by a group of women artists intent on achieving professional excellence in an industry where there was a gross lack of opportunities for women to succeed. SOHO20 was one of the first galleries in Manhattan to showcase the work of an all-woman membership and most of the members joined the organization as emerging artists. These artists were provided with exhibition opportunities that they could not find elsewhere.
Harmony Hammond is an American artist, activist, curator, and writer.
Maxine Hammond Dashu, known professionally as Max Dashu, is an American feminist historian, author, and artist. Her areas of expertise include female iconography, mother-right cultures and the origins of patriarchy.
Nancy Angelo is an organizational psychologist and formerly a performance and video artist who took part in the feminist art movement in Los Angeles. As an artist, she is best known for co-founding the collaborative performance art group The Feminist Art Workers in 1976 with Candace Compton, Cheri Gaulke, and Laurel Klick.
Louisa Calio is an American poet, writer, multimedia performance artist and teacher. She has directed the Poets and Writers' Piazza for Hofstra University's Italian Experience for the past 10 years. Calio's writings have appeared internationally in anthologies, magazines and journals. She has been honored by Barnard College, Columbia University as a Feminist Who Changed America Second Wave 1963-1975. She has traveled to East and West Africa, lived in the Caribbean and documented her journeys in photographs and the written word, completing an epic poem "Journey to the Heart Waters" which was also the title of an exhibition of photos and poems that opened at Round Hill Resort in Montego Bay in 2007.
Nancy Buchanan is a Los Angeles-based artist best known for her work in installation, performance, and video art. She played a central role in the feminist art movement in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Her work has been exhibited widely and is collected by major museums including the Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou.
HERESIES: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics was a feminist journal that was produced from 1977 to 1993 by the New York-based Heresies Collective.
New York Feminist Art Institute (NYFAI) was founded in 1979 by women artists, educators and professionals. NYFAI offered workshops and classes, held performances and exhibitions and special events that contributed to the political and cultural import of the women's movement at the time. The women's art school focused on self-development and discovery as well as art. Nancy Azara introduced "visual diaries" to artists to draw and paint images that arose from consciousness-raising classes and their personal lives. In the first half of the 1980s the school was named the Women's Center for Learning and it expanded its artistic and academic programs. Ceres Gallery was opened in 1985 after the school moved to TriBeCa and, like the school, it catered to women artists. NYFAI participated in protests to increase women's art shown at the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art and other museums. It held exhibitions and workshops and provided rental and studio space for women artists. Unable to secure sufficient funding to continue its operations, NYFAI closed in 1990. Ceres Gallery moved to SoHo and then to Chelsea and remained a gallery for women's art. However, a group continues to meet called (RE)PRESENT, a series of intergenerational dialogues at a NYC gallery to encourage discussion across generations about contemporary issues for women in the arts. It is open to all.
Chrysalis: A Magazine of Women's Culture was a feminist publication produced from 1977 to 1980. The self-published magazine was founded by Kirsten Grimstad and Susan Rennie at the Woman's Building in downtown Los Angeles. Chrysalis grew from Grimstad and Rennie's editorial work on the self-help resource books, The New Woman's Survival Catalog and The New Woman's Survival Sourcebook. Chrysalis distinguished itself from other feminist publications through an organic integration of politics, literature, cultural studies, and art. The magazine was produced through a collective process that grew out of the feminist practice of consciousness-raising. Unusually broad in scope, Chrysalis did not substitute breadth for quality. The authors, poets, essayists, and researchers contributing to the magazine reveal a veritable who's who of towering intellects of the feminist movement: black lesbian activist Audre Lorde; the magazine's poetry editor, Robin Morgan, who later served as editor of Ms. from 1990-1993: award winning poet Adrienne Rich; novelist Marge Piercy; artist Judy Chicago; science fiction writer Joanna Russ; art critic Lucy Lippard, plus Mary Daly, Dolores Hayden, Andrea Dworkin, Marilyn Hacker, Arlene Raven, and Elizabeth Janeway. Over a three-year span, the all volunteer staff produced ten issues before they were forced to disband in 1981 due to financial difficulties.
Vivian E. Browne was an American artist. Born in Laurel, Florida, Browne was mostly known for her African-American protest paintings, and linking abstraction to nature. She has received multiple awards for her work, been an activist, professor and a founder of many galleries. According to her mother, Browne died at 64 from bladder cancer.
June Druiett Blum was a multimedia American artist who produced paintings, sculptures, prints, light shows, happenings, jewelry, art books, pottery, conceptual documentations, and drawings. She was also a feminist curator and activist who worked to advance the women's movement and increase visibility for women artists.
Christy Rupp is an American artist and activist. She lives and works in New York City and the Hudson Valley in New York. Her work is inspired by the study of animal behavior. She is one of a group of early eco-artists concerned with urban ecology and our perceptions of nature. Her work has been shown extensively at galleries and museums.
Joan Braderman is an American video artist, director, performer, and writer. Braderman's video works are considered to have created her signature style known as "stand up theory." Via this "performative embodiment," she deconstructs and analyzes popular media by inserting chroma-keyed cut-outs of her own body into appropriated mass media images, where she interrogates the representation of ideology and the transparency of photographic space in U.S. popular culture.
Art Workers News, also known as Art & Artists, was the highly influential artist-run publication of the Foundation for the Community of Artists (FCA), an organization that grew out of the National Art Workers Community. From 1971 to 1989, the publication was the paper of record for the world of working artists. Its circulation reached a high of 40,000 subscribers.
The Foundation for the Community of Artists was founded in 1971 as a support organization for working artists. By 1988 its membership had grown to nearly 6,000, including artists, art workers and representatives of art organizations. Although the majority lived in the New York metropolitan area, there were members located throughout the nation. It remained active through the 1990s.
Sophie Rivera is a Puerto Rican-American artist and photographer born in the Bronx, New York. She is best known as a photographer whose work challenged stereotypical assumptions of Puerto Ricans in the United States. She was also an early member and instructor of En Foco, a non-profit organization that nurtures contemporary fine art and documentary photographers of diverse cultures.