The Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series: From Idea to Institution

Abstract

During the 1960s, women began to identify and admit that social, political, and cultural inequities existed, and to seek redress. In 1966, a structural solidarity took shape with the founding of NOW (National Organization for Women). Women artists, sympathetic to the aims of this movement, recognized the need for a coalition with a more specific direction, and, at the height of the women's movement, several groups were formed that uniquely focused on issues of concern to women artists. In 1969 W.A.R. (Women Artists in Revolution) grew out of the Art Worker's Coalition, an antiestablishment group. In 1970 the Ad Hoc Women Artists Committee was formed, initially to increase the representation of women in the Whitney Museum annuals but later a more broad-based purpose of political and legal action and a program of regular discussions was adopted. Across the country, women artists were organizing in consciousness-raising sessions, joining hands in support groups, and picketing and protesting for the relief of injustices that they felt were rampant in the male-dominated art world. In January 1971, Linda Nochlin answered the question she posed in her now famous and widely cited article, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" Nochlin maintained that the exclusion of women from social and cultural institutions was the root cause that created a kind of cultural malnourishment of women. In June 1971, a new unity led the Los Angeles Council of Women Artists to threaten to sue the Los Angeles County Museum for discrimination. That same year, at Cal Arts (California Institute of the Arts) Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro developed the first women's art program in the nation. These bicoastal activities illustrate merely the high points of the women's art movement, forming an historical framework and providing the emotional climate for the beginning of the Women Artists Series at Douglass College.