Suffragette City
Art Ltd. Magazine
By Betty Ann Brown, art historian, curator, and critic
January 2011
Suffragette City, published in the January Issue of Art Ltd. Magazine, chronically Feminist consciousness in California, includes renowned artists June Wayne, Judy Chicago, Betye Saar, Linda Nochlin, Miriam Schapiro, Robin Mitchell, Mira Schor, Faith Wilding, Nancy Youdelman, Arlene Raven, Shelia Levrant de Bretteville, and Linda Vallejo.
Betty Ann Brown says, “Los Angeles became a major center of the burgeoning feminist art movement in the 1970s because of three reasons. First was the confluence of remarkable artists, including Judy Chicago, Linda Vallejo, June Wayne, and Betye Saar, among many others. The second involved institutional opportunities, from UCLA (where Chicago was trained) to CalArts (where her Feminist Art Program was welcomed) to the Los Angeles Woman’s Building (founded by feminist artists themselves). Third was the history of radical politics in California, a history that had been firmly connected to art world protests in 1952, when the Los Angeles city council discussed progressive artists as ‘tools of the Kremlin.’ The personal, institutional, and political environment proved fertile for the growth of feminist artists who claimed their personal as political and gave it resonant visual form for decades.”
Suffragette City also heralded the Otis Art Institute exhibition Doin’ It in Public: Feminism and the Art of the Woman’s Building included in the Getty Initiative Pacific Standard Time exhibitions from October 2011 through January 2012.
Full articleGetty Research Initiative Pacific Standard TimeDoin’ it in Public: Art & Feminism at the Woman’s Building