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Woman's Building (Los Angeles)
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."
The time: mid-'70s. The place: the Feminist Studio Workshop, later to become the Woman's Building.
The quest: to find themselves, to make art, to change the culture.
— Jan Breslauer, 1992
In 1973, CalArts teachers artist Judy Chicago, graphic designer Sheila Levrant de Bretteville and art historian Arlene Raven were finally finished with trying to offer feminist education in a male-dominated institution like CalArts. That year, they quit CalArts and founded the Feminist Studio Workshop (FSW). FSW was one of the first independent art schools for women, and revolved around a workshop environment, allowing women to develop their artistic skills and knowledge outside a traditional educational environment. The vision of FSW was that art should not be separated from activities related to the women's movement. Students were encouraged to collaborate with each other, pooling together their different skills and resources to work on the same art projects. FSW originally met in de Bretteville's home, and in November 1973, the three women began renting a workshop space in a vacant building near MacArthur Park, calling it the Woman's Building after a building from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. FSW sublet space in the building to performance art groups, the Sisterhood Bookstore, the Associated Women's Press, local chapters of the National Organization for Women and the Women's Liberation Union, and three galleries: Womanspace Gallery, Gallery 707, and Grandview. The building's goal included having multiple female artists represented in a registry cataloging them. The way they went about adding female artists to the registry is by allowing other female visual artists to submit ten slides of their work, a resume, and information about themselves in order to be considered to be added to the registry. The registry they created included the "[artists'] books, resumes, correspondence, postcards, and samples of [their] art in the form of sketches, drawings, and prints" from 1970 to 1992.
In 1975, the building that FSW was renting was sold, and they, along with the other tenants, moved to a former Standard Oil Company building from the 1920s. In the 1940s, the building had been converted into a warehouse, consisting of three floors of open space, making it ideal for FSW's classes and exhibitions. The space was the first arts organization to locate itself in downtown Los Angeles, contributing to the revitalization of the area during the 1970s and 1980s. FSW became the main tenant as the previous smaller tenants left, and decided to hire an administrator and create a board of directors to handle the growth of the organization. FSW obtained funding from memberships, tuition, fund-raising and grants.
One of Kate Millett's statues that she had originally created for her work Naked Ladies was installed on top of the building in 1978 to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the art center.
Numerous programs and groups formed out of FSW. They offered a two-year program in interdisciplinary arts, such as performing, graphics, video and writing. Deena Metzger started the writing program which included an ongoing writing series. Readers in the series included Meridel LeSueur, Honor Moore, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich. They also hosted large-scale exhibitions, media and social events. From 1976 to 1980 the Feminist Art Workers toured the Midwest with interactive performance and installation artworks. A performance group called the Waitresses formed, who performed in restaurants using the waitress as a metaphor for women in society. The Incest Awareness Project consisted of a series of interactive exhibitions from 1978–79, including a video installation, Equal Time and Equal Space, directed by Nancy Angelo, in which audience members would sit surrounded by video monitors playing videos of incest survivors sharing their experiences. A group piece, In Mourning and in Rage, created by Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz, featured 10 tall women, wearing 7-foot-tall head extensions, draped in black, standing on the steps of the Los Angeles City Hall. Each woman represented a victim of the Hillside Strangler and a statistic of violence against women. Works such as these are credited with shaping the contemporary performance art scene. Another collective, Mother Art, created installations and performances that addressed the issues their members faced as both mothers and artists.
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Woman's Building (Los Angeles)
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."
The time: mid-'70s. The place: the Feminist Studio Workshop, later to become the Woman's Building.
The quest: to find themselves, to make art, to change the culture.
— Jan Breslauer, 1992
In 1973, CalArts teachers artist Judy Chicago, graphic designer Sheila Levrant de Bretteville and art historian Arlene Raven were finally finished with trying to offer feminist education in a male-dominated institution like CalArts. That year, they quit CalArts and founded the Feminist Studio Workshop (FSW). FSW was one of the first independent art schools for women, and revolved around a workshop environment, allowing women to develop their artistic skills and knowledge outside a traditional educational environment. The vision of FSW was that art should not be separated from activities related to the women's movement. Students were encouraged to collaborate with each other, pooling together their different skills and resources to work on the same art projects. FSW originally met in de Bretteville's home, and in November 1973, the three women began renting a workshop space in a vacant building near MacArthur Park, calling it the Woman's Building after a building from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. FSW sublet space in the building to performance art groups, the Sisterhood Bookstore, the Associated Women's Press, local chapters of the National Organization for Women and the Women's Liberation Union, and three galleries: Womanspace Gallery, Gallery 707, and Grandview. The building's goal included having multiple female artists represented in a registry cataloging them. The way they went about adding female artists to the registry is by allowing other female visual artists to submit ten slides of their work, a resume, and information about themselves in order to be considered to be added to the registry. The registry they created included the "[artists'] books, resumes, correspondence, postcards, and samples of [their] art in the form of sketches, drawings, and prints" from 1970 to 1992.
In 1975, the building that FSW was renting was sold, and they, along with the other tenants, moved to a former Standard Oil Company building from the 1920s. In the 1940s, the building had been converted into a warehouse, consisting of three floors of open space, making it ideal for FSW's classes and exhibitions. The space was the first arts organization to locate itself in downtown Los Angeles, contributing to the revitalization of the area during the 1970s and 1980s. FSW became the main tenant as the previous smaller tenants left, and decided to hire an administrator and create a board of directors to handle the growth of the organization. FSW obtained funding from memberships, tuition, fund-raising and grants.
One of Kate Millett's statues that she had originally created for her work Naked Ladies was installed on top of the building in 1978 to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the art center.
Numerous programs and groups formed out of FSW. They offered a two-year program in interdisciplinary arts, such as performing, graphics, video and writing. Deena Metzger started the writing program which included an ongoing writing series. Readers in the series included Meridel LeSueur, Honor Moore, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich. They also hosted large-scale exhibitions, media and social events. From 1976 to 1980 the Feminist Art Workers toured the Midwest with interactive performance and installation artworks. A performance group called the Waitresses formed, who performed in restaurants using the waitress as a metaphor for women in society. The Incest Awareness Project consisted of a series of interactive exhibitions from 1978–79, including a video installation, Equal Time and Equal Space, directed by Nancy Angelo, in which audience members would sit surrounded by video monitors playing videos of incest survivors sharing their experiences. A group piece, In Mourning and in Rage, created by Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz, featured 10 tall women, wearing 7-foot-tall head extensions, draped in black, standing on the steps of the Los Angeles City Hall. Each woman represented a victim of the Hillside Strangler and a statistic of violence against women. Works such as these are credited with shaping the contemporary performance art scene. Another collective, Mother Art, created installations and performances that addressed the issues their members faced as both mothers and artists.