Then and Now: Recognition of Women Artists Since 1970

When the Women Artist Series began in 1971, feminists were painfully aware of their limited opportunities for recognition. Actually, the women's movement had only recently reached the art world. The National Organization for Women had formed seven years earlier, and in August 1970, thousands of women had marched in cities across the United States to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment that guaranteed women's suffrage. Feminists demanded passage of an Equal Rights Amendment-a constitutional amendment which has yet to find sufficient support in this country. By the early seventies, many women artists had become activists, and challenged commercial galleries and museums to give women equitable representation. Feminists also determined that the art historical canon should include great women artists, and the study of art came to involve new issues, new interpretations, and new voices. As the women's movement flourished, feminists protested museum exhibitions that included only token numbers of women. Organizations such as Women Artists in Revolution (W\R) and the Ad Hoc Committee of the Art Workers Coalition wrote letters of protest and demonstrated at the Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art. Curators at the Whitney, for example, generally chose fewer than 10 percent women for the Whitney Annual. Few if any shows were devoted to women's work. In addition, women artists were seldom written about in art magazines, and found little interest in their art by commercial dealers (although many dealers were women, they preferred male artists). Group exhibitions of contemporary art in major museums largely ignored the achievement of women. Although the pressure exerted by women's organizations resulted in a few solo exhibitions for women artists of historical importance, contemporary women artists remained barely visible. Several art organizations and gal-