Part 2 of this lesson looks at different ways in which women have worked to create and build womens artists’ groups. This is just one aspect of the broader picture offered in Part 1 about women’s arts organisations. However, it has been the most common form of women artists’ collective activities, events and interventions in the history of feminist art.
The internet may present itself as a library of all libraries but on the subject of women artists’ groups and their histories, it is generally only “recent” or “still current” organisations that are visible online. There have been several sites developed which aim to provide a history of women artists’ groups that are no longer functioning – or represent an archive site for groups that closed.
Understanding the history of women artists’ groups is part of understanding the relationships between feminism and contemporary art through the histories of the women’s art movement. However, most of the resources for this history remain in print form, in books, journals and exhibition catalogues. See the example at the bottom of the page about Danish feminist art groups.
You can use the list of feminist art books at http://www.ktpress.co.uk to look for books about women artists’ groups. Search by country to look at particular histories. Also look through the exhibitions list for particular exhibitions.
Looking only at online sources, you might like to compare two historical sites documenting the work of women artists’ groups:-
Mit: archive 2001-2008 (Switzerland)
a Zurich based group of 11 female artists, organising interventions in public and private spaces
with
Women in the Arts, Singapore (WITAS) (active between 1999-2005) (Singapore)
or, three contemporary women artists’ groups, still operating:-
Mujeres Publicas (Argentina)
a feminist activist group, organising projects in Argentina
and
h.arta (Romania)
h.arta is a group of 3 women organising projects in Romania since 2001
or
ff (Austria)
The Temporäre Autonome Zone is an independent experimental exhibition platform produced by Lisa Ruyter with ff, a group of international women artists who meet regularly to collaborate on feminist projects. Based at Galerie Lisa Ruyter, Vienna.
There are more groups and websites listed at: http://www.ktpress.co.uk/feminist-art-women-artists-groups.asp
Having a building of one’s own, a space in and through which events, exhibitions, workshops and talks could be organised was a major ambition for many feminist groups. In reality, there have been very few women artists’ groups which have achieved this goal.
One of the most successful and long-lasting is recorded on the website for The Woman’s Building in Los Angeles. This website offers insights into the founding and collective activities fostered there, 1973-1991. These activities were also documented in an exhibition: 2012 Doing it in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building (Los Angeles: Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design) Curated by Meg Linton and Sue Maberry
As part of the exhibition, they made many videos of feminists talking about their involvement in activities at the Women’s Building.
Watch this one: Woman’s Building History: Feminist Art Workers (Otis College) Made in 2010.
Feminist Art Workers is a collaborative performance art group founded in 1976 by Nancy Angelo, Candace Compton, Cheri Gaulke and Laurel Klick and later included Vanalyne Green. Emerging from the educational programs at the Woman’s Building in Los Angeles, Feminist Art Workers incorporated techniques of feminist education into participatory performance structures. They addressed issues of community (Heaven or Hell?), violence against women (This Ain’t No Heavy Breathing and Traffic in Women: A Feminist Vehicle) and work (Bills of Rights). Their performances took place in places as varied as city streets (Pieta, Afloat), during protest rallies (Draw Your Own Conclusions: Know on 13), in buses and museums.
This video was commissioned by Otis College of Art and Design for the exhibition “Doin’ It in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building” (1973-1991) in the Ben Maltz Gallery, October 1 January 28, 2012 and is part of an ongoing series of oral histories about the Woman’s Building partially funded by the Getty Foundation. The exhibition was part of a “Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A.1945-1980,” an unprecedented collaboration of more than fifty cultural institutions across Southern California, which are coming together to tell the story of the birth of the LA art scene in October 2011.
Documenting a Feminist Past (2007) MOMA exhibition
A form of oral history of women artists’ participation in feminism, is found in the first-hand accounts of women artists in the Feminist Forum, M/E/A/N/I/N/G No. 4 (2007)Â online, edited by Mira Schor and Susan Bee.
Lynn Hershman Leeson’s archive, Voices of a Movement, provides access to the video documentation used in her film !WAR, Women, Art and Revolution and is available at Stanford University Library Archive.
This website provides insights into those she interviewed and video footage or transcripts of the interviews. See, for example, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville on founding The Women’s Building and Marcia Tucker who founded the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York.
To illustrate some of the problems with researching the history of feminist art groups solely online – or relying only on online resources, the following example from different women’s groups in Denmark is offered. If you follow the links offered you will only see fragments of the picture of activities described in the text, some of the information offered only covers more recent projects by the artists whose names are mentioned. It is also offered as an example because it shows how important “genealogies” within feminism can be when older and younger women work together.
KanonKlubben (Canon Club)
The information about the Kanonklubben (Canon Club) and its members is mainly to be found in the publication, published collectively in 1977, under a group authors’ name “Lilith” Billedet som Kampmiddel : Kvindebilleder Mellem 1968 og 1977 (Denmark: Informations Forlag,Lilith). This title roughly translates into English as: The image as instrument/weapon. The group behind the book came together around an exhibition in 1975, known as The Women’s Exhibition XX (Charlottenburg Palace, Copenhagen). 22 of the 35 women in the exhibition helped to prepare the book
The Kanonklubben included several women artists, and some have websites featuring later works – as they have had very long careers as artists since the 1960s: Kirsten Justesen; Jytte Rex; Rikke Diemer; Kirsten Dufour also wrote an interesting paper about her more recent projects 1995-2002 in How can on-going critical spaces be established and maintained? (An essay on the space in between)
The Kanonklubben (Denmark), while working as collective group and still art students at the Danish Art Academy, produced Damenbilleder / Ladies’ Pictures (Women’s Pictures) (1970). Eight women were involved in these performances/installations created on different days: Rikke Diemer, Birgitte Skjold Jensen, Jytte Rex, Marie Bille, Jytte Keller, Lene Bille, Kirsten Dufour. Documentation of this work can be found in: WACK! and in the catalogue of a more recent exhibition: What’s Happening? Statens Museum fur Kunst/National Gallery of Denmark, (26 March-2 August 2015).
Katy Deepwell interviewed Kirsten Justesen about this work in 1999 and you can read Sanne Kofod Olsen in dialogue with her in n.paradoxa online from April 2008. The work is archived as part of Re.ActFeminism.org
The museum’s website provides insights into Lene Adler Petersen‘s performance walking naked holding a cross through the Danish Stock Exchange in 1969; a short clip from another of the group’s most important films: Sleeping Beauty/Tornerose var et vakkert barn by Kirsten Justesen and Jytte Rex, 1971. It also used to link to another page on Kvinfo or on Ursula Reuter Christiansen which is part of their permanent collection. Her website is: Ursula Reuter Christiansen.
The museum also produced the following video of Kirsten Dufour and Rikke Diemer speaking about Ladies’ Pictures.
Click this link for You Tube copy: Rikke Diemer og Kirsten Dufour om Damebilleder, SMK National Gallery of Denmark.
Women Down the Pub
Similarly the information about another group of women artists/art historians in Denmark, Women Down the Pub, (1997-2010) can be found in their major publication: Women Down the Pub: Nanna Debois Buhl, Lisa Strombeck, Esa Sonjasdotter (eds) Udsigt – Feministiske Strategier i Dansk Billedkunst / View – Feminist Strategies in Danish Visual Art  (Denmark: Informations Vorla, 2004). There is an article in KVINFO magazine on their work (in Danish) in 2002.
This publication was a collective effort with many contributors and it also importantly looked back at collective initiatives by women artists in the 1970s, and contrasted these with initiatives in the 1990s.
Some of the artists and writers involved in this initiative (over and above the editors, named above) were: Katya Sander, Susan Hinnum, Annika Strom, Mette Sandbye, Kirsten Justesen, Lone Hoyer Hansen, Maryam Jafri, Annika Lundgren, Kirsten Dufour, Sanne Kofod Olsen (currently, Rector of the Danish Art Academy), Rune Gade, Gitte Villesen, Henrietta Heise, Drude Dallerup and Sine Bang Nielsen.
Some of the collective activities explored in the book are:-
the publication of Lilith Billedet som Kampmiddel
the Canonclub
the Women’s exhibition at Charlottenburg Palace Copenhagen in 1975
the Women’s Gallery in Aarhus, 1977-1985
and
Air condition: a student-run educational programme at the Danish Academy of Fine Arts, 1996-1998.
The Women’s 96th Anniversary exhibition at the Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2004 where for the 250th exhibition of the Academy, Honey Biba Beckerlee and Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld organised a special women’s exhibition.
Udsigt also describes a large number of feminist interventions, performances and artworks by women artists from the 1990s.
The publication explores the question of activism in the visual arts and its relation to feminist politics. It is available in both Danish and English.
In 1998-early 2000s, the project Boomerang, profiled online around 60 contemporary Danish women and feminist artists. This project arose from an exhibition in 1998 called Boomerang, at the Nikolaj exhibition hall in Copenhagen, curated by Sanne Kofod Olsen. This website does not exist anymore.
Part 3> of this lesson will take up again the question of what do we mean by feminist activism in the founding of women’s art organisations?
