The Woman's Building was a

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

arts and education center located in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. The Woman's Building focused on

feminist art Feminist art is a category of art associated with the late 1960s and 1970s feminist movement. Feminist art highlights the societal and political differences women experience within their lives. The hopeful gain from this form of art is to bri ...

and served as a venue for the

women's movement The feminist movement (also known as the women's movement, or feminism) refers to a series of social movements and political campaigns for radical and liberal reforms on women's issues created by the inequality between men and women. Such is ...

and was spearheaded by artist

Judy Chicago Judy Chicago (born Judith Sylvia Cohen; July 20, 1939) is an American feminist artist, art educator, and writer known for her large collaborative art installation pieces about birth and creation images, which examine the role of women in history ...

, graphic designer

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville Sheila Levrant de Bretteville (born 1940) is an American graphic designer, artist and educator whose work reflects her belief in the importance of feminist principles and user participation in graphic design. In 1990 she became the director of th ...

and art historian Arlene Raven. The center was open from 1973 until 1991. During its existence, the

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...

called the Woman's Building a "feminist mecca."

History

Feminist Studio Workshop

In 1973,

CalArts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art university in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both ...

teachers artist

, graphic designer

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 An art school is an educational institution with a primary focus on the visual arts, including fine art – especially illustration, painting, photography, sculpture, and graphic design. Art schools can offer elementary, secondary, post-second ...

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 Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

should not be separated from activities related to the

. 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 MacArthur Park (originally Westlake Park) is a park dating back to the late 19th century in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles. In the early 1940s, it was renamed after General Douglas MacArthur, and later designated City of Los Angeles H ...

, calling it the Woman's Building after a building from the

1893 World's Columbian Exposition The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, hel ...

. FSW sublet space in the building to

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

groups, the Sisterhood Bookstore, the Associated Women's Press, local chapters of the

National Organization for Women The National Organization for Women (NOW) is an American feminist organization. Founded in 1966, it is legally a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S. states and in Washington, D.C. It ...

and the Women's Liberation Union, and three galleries:

Womanspace Gallery 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 d ...

, Gallery 707, and Grandview.

New building

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 A warehouse is a building for storing goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial parks on the outskirts of cities ...

, 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 Grant or Grants may refer to: Places * Grant County (disambiguation) Australia * Grant, Queensland, a locality in the Barcaldine Region, Queensland, Australia United Kingdom *Castle Grant United States * Grant, Alabama *Grant, Inyo County, ...

. 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 Deena Metzger (born September 17, 1936) is an American writer, healer, and teacher whose work spans multiple genres including the novel, poetry, non-fiction, and plays. Her novel ''La Negra y Blanca'' won the 2012 Oakland Pen Award for Literatur ...

started the writing program which included an ongoing writing series. Readers in the series included

Meridel LeSueur Meridel Le Sueur (February 22, 1900, Murray, Iowa – November 14, 1996, Hudson, Wisconsin) was an American writer associated with the proletarian literature movement of the 1930s and 1940s. Born as Meridel Wharton, she assumed the name of her mot ...

, Honor Moore,

Audre Lorde Audre Lorde (; born Audrey Geraldine Lorde; February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an American writer, womanist, radical feminist, professor, and civil rights activist. She was a self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," wh ...

, and

Adrienne Rich Adrienne Cecile Rich ( ; May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the ...

. 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 art Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called ...

works. A performance group called the Waitresses formed, who performed in restaurants using the

waitress Waiting staff (British English), waitstaff (North American English), waiters (male) / waitresses (female), or servers (North American English), are those who work at a restaurant, a diner, or a bar and sometimes in private homes, attending ...

as a

metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wi ...

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 Nancy Angelo (born October 8, 1953 in Carson City, Nevada, USA) is an organizational psychologist and formerly a performance and video artist who took part in the feminist art movement in Los Angeles. As an artist, she is best known for co-found ...

, in which audience members would sit surrounded by video monitors playing videos of

incest Incest ( ) is human sexual activity between family members or close relatives. This typically includes sexual activity between people in consanguinity (blood relations), and sometimes those related by affinity (marriage or stepfamily), adopti ...

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 Los Angeles City Hall, completed in 1928, is the center of the government of the city of Los Angeles, California, and houses the mayor's office and the meeting chambers and offices of the Los Angeles City Council. It is located in the Civic Cente ...

. Each woman represented a victim of the

Hillside Strangler The Hillside Strangler, later the Hillside Stranglers, is the media epithet for one, later discovered to be two, American serial killers who terrorized Los Angeles, California, between October 1977 and February 1978, with the nicknames originating ...

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. Artist

designed a necklace of an

eyebolt An eye bolt is a bolt with a loop at one end. They are used to firmly attach a securing eye to a structure, so that ropes or cables may then be tied to it. Eye bolts Machinery eye bolts are fully threaded and may have a collar, making them sui ...

on a chain, meant to represent "strength without a fist"; members of the FSW in 1978-79 made 500 of these necklaces to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the Woman's Building. In 1979, artists from the Woman's Building issued a nationwide call for lesbian artists to organize exhibitions of their work as part of the

Great American Lesbian Art Show The Great American Lesbian Art Show (GALAS) was an art exhibition at the Woman's Building (a feminist art center) in Los Angeles, California with associated events in other locations. It ran from 3–31 May 1980. The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Comm ...

(GALAS).

Final decade

In 1981, the Feminist Studio Workshop closed, due to the diminishing demand for alternative education. With FSW's closure, the programs of the Woman's Building were altered to cater to the needs of working women. The building's hours were reduced and two thirds of it rented to artists for studio space. That year all three of the founding members left, and former students

Terry Wolverton Terry Wolverton (born 1954) is an American novelist, memoirist, poet, and editor. Her boo''Insurgent Muse: Life and Art at the Woman's Building'' a memoir published in 2002 by City Lights Books, was named one of the "Best Books of 2002" by the Lo ...

, Sue Maberry and Cheri Gaulke led the organization. They also began the Vesta Awards, an annual fundraiser. The performance group Sisters of Survival, which formed in 1981, exhibited and toured across the United States and Europe to protest nuclear weapon proliferation. That year, the Woman's Building founded the Women's Graphic Center Typesetting and Design, a for-profit business designed to strengthen their finances and support the artistic endeavors of the Building. They provided phototypesetting, graphic design, production and

printing Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ...

services. However, in 1988 the Women's Graphic Center closed, and the income for staff salaries disappeared. Wolverton served as sole executive director from 1988 to April 1989 before leaving. Pauli De Witt replaced Wolverton, staying only briefly and failing to rescue the organization financially. After she left, a 13-member board ran the Woman's Building. The Woman's Building never recovered and despite pushes to move to another location, they closed the gallery and performance space in 1991. They continued to hold the Vesta Awards, with keynote speaker

Lucy Lippard Lucy Rowland Lippard (born April 14, 1937) is an American writer, art critic, activist, and curator. Lippard was among the first writers to argue for the " dematerialization" at work in conceptual art and was an early champion of feminist art. S ...

and proceeds going towards an oral history of the organization.

Legacy

In 1991, Sandra Golvin, President of the Board of Directors, donated the Woman's Building records to the Smithsonian's

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washingt ...

. Other archival collections of materials are at the

Getty Research Institute The Getty Research Institute (GRI), located at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, is "dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts".

and the ONE Archives, both in Los Angeles. The Woman's Building and its legacy was the subject of a major exhibition called ''Doin It In Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman's Building'' at the

Ben Maltz Gallery The Ben Maltz Gallery at the Otis College of Art and Design is an art space in Los Angeles, California. Overview It presents group and solo exhibitions in a variety of media. The main focus is showcasing contemporary art that pushes the boundari ...

Otis College of Art and Design Otis College of Art and Design is a private art and design school in Los Angeles, California. Established in 1918, it was the city's first independent professional school of art. The main campus is located in the former IBM Aerospace headquarte ...

in 2011/2012. The exhibition was part of the Getty initiative, Pacific Standard Time. The exhibition was accompanied by a 2-volume catalog, and a website that includes historical information about the Woman's Building. On June 8, 2018, the L.A. City Council designated the Woman's Building as a Historic Cultural Monument.

References

Notes Further reading *''Doin' It in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman's Building - A Guide to the Exhibition by Otis College of Art and Design'', by Sue Maberry, Meg Linton, and Terry Wolverton (2012). . *''Doin' It in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman's Building'', Volume II, anthology edited by Meg Linton and Sue Maberry (2012). *''From Site to Vision: the Woman's Building in Contemporary Culture'', anthology edited by Sondra Hale and Terry Wolverton (2011). . *''Insurgent Muse: Life and Art at the Woman's Building'', by Terry Wolverton. San Francisco: City Lights Publishers (2002).

External links

An interview with Suzanne Lacy
from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.
Woman's Building oral history interviews

Woman's Building posters in the collection of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics
{{Authority control Arts centers in California Performance art in Los Angeles Community centers in California Contemporary art galleries in the United States Defunct companies based in Greater Los Angeles Defunct non-profit organizations based in the United States Feminist art organizations in the United States Feminism in California University and college arts centers in the United States Art galleries established in 1973 Art galleries disestablished in 1991 1973 establishments in California 1991 disestablishments in California Women's culture Women's clubs in the United States