Woman's Building
Encyclopedia
The Woman's Building was an non-profit arts and education center located in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

, in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. 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
Judy Chicago
Judy Chicago is a feminist artist, author, and educator.Chicago has been creating artwork since the mid 1960s. Her earliest forays into the art world coincided with the rise of Minimalism, which she eventually abandoned in favor of art she believed to have greater content and relevance...

, graphic designer
Graphic designer
A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed or electronic media, such as brochures and...

 Sheila Levrant de Bretteville
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville is a graphic designer, artist and educator whose work reflects her belief in the importance of feminist principles and user participation in graphic design...

 and art historian Arlene Raven
Arlene Raven
Arlene Raven was a feminist art historian, author, critic, educator, and curator...

. The center was open from 1973 until 1991. During its existence, the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

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

Feminist Studio Workshop

"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
Judy Chicago
Judy Chicago is a feminist artist, author, and educator.Chicago has been creating artwork since the mid 1960s. Her earliest forays into the art world coincided with the rise of Minimalism, which she eventually abandoned in favor of art she believed to have greater content and relevance...

, graphic designer
Graphic designer
A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed or electronic media, such as brochures and...

 Sheila Levrant de Bretteville
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville is a graphic designer, artist and educator whose work reflects her belief in the importance of feminist principles and user participation in graphic design...

 and art historian Arlene Raven
Arlene Raven
Arlene Raven was a feminist art historian, author, critic, educator, and curator...

 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 of a traditional educational environment. The vision of FSW was that art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

 should not be separated from activities related to the women's movement. FSW originally met in de Bretteville's home, and in November of 1973 the three women began renting a workshop space in a vacant building in MacArthur Park
MacArthur Park
MacArthur Park is a park in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, named after General Douglas MacArthur and designated city of Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument #100.- Geography :...

, calling it the Woman's Building; named after a building from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. FSW sublet space in the building to performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...

 groups, the Sisterhood Bookstore, the Associated Women's Press, local chapters of the National Organization of Women and the Women's Liberation Union, and three galleries: Womanspace Gallery, Gallery 707, and Grandview.

The (new) Woman's 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 was converted into a warehouse
Warehouse
A warehouse is a commercial building for storage of goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial areas of cities and towns. They usually have loading docks to load and unload...

, consisting of three floors of open space, making it ideal for classes and exhibitions held by FSW. The space was the first arts organization to located itselfs in downtown Los Angeles
Downtown Los Angeles
Downtown Los Angeles is the central business district of Los Angeles, California, United States, located close to the geographic center of the metropolitan area...

, 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
Board of directors
A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...

 to handle the growth of the organization. FSW obtained funding from memberships, tuition, fund-raising and grants.

Numerous programs and groups formed out of FSW. They offered a two-year program in interdisciplinary arts, such as performing, graphics, video and writing. 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
Installation art
Installation art describes 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 Land art; however, the boundaries between...

. A performance group called the Waitresses formed, who performed in restaurants using the waitress as a metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...

 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
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...

 survivors sharing their experiences. A group piece, In Mourning and in Rage, created by Suzanne Lacy
Suzanne Lacy
Suzanne Lacy is an internationally known artist, educator, writer, and former public servant. She describes her work, which includes "installations, video, and large-scale performances", as focusing on "social themes and urban issues." She also served in the education cabinet of Jerry Brown, then...

 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
Los Angeles City Hall, completed 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...

. Each woman represented a victim of the Hillside Strangler
Hillside Strangler
The Hillside Strangler is the media epithet for two men, cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, who were convicted of kidnapping, raping, torturing, and killing girls and women ranging in age from 12 to 28 years old during a four-month period from late 1977 to early 1978...

 and a statistic of violence against women. Works such as these are credited with shaping the contemporary performance art scene.

Final 10 years

In 1981 the Feminist Studio Workshop closed, due to the diminishing demand for alternative education
Alternative education
Alternative education, also known as non-traditional education or educational alternative, includes a number of approaches to teaching and learning other than mainstream or traditional education. Educational alternatives are often rooted in various philosophies that are fundamentally different...

. With FSW's closure, the programs of the Woman's Building were formed to cater to the needs of working women. They cut back the buildings hours and rented two-thirds of the building to artists for studio space. That year all three of the founding members left, and former students Terry Wolverton
Terry Wolverton
Terry Wolverton is an American novelist, memoirist, poet, and editor. Her book 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 Los Angeles Times, and was the winner of the 2003 Publishing...

, Sue Maberry and Cheri Gaulke
Cheri Gaulke
Cheri Gaulke is a visual artist most known for her role in the Feminist Art Movement in southern California in the 1970s and her current work on gay and lesbian families...

 led the organization. They also began the Vesta Awards, an annual fundraiser. 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
Phototypesetting
Phototypesetting was a method of setting type, rendered obsolete with the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing software, that uses a photographic process to generate columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper...

, graphic design
Graphic design
Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...

, production and printing
Printing
Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....

 services. 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, only staying briefly before failing to rescue the organization financially. After her leave, 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 and proceeds going towards an oral history
Oral history
Oral history is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews...

 of the organization.

Legacy

In 1991, Sandra Golvin, President of the Board of Directors, donated the Woman's Building records to the Archives of American Art
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 16 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washington, D.C...

. The Woman's Building is the subject of an exhibition and a 2-volume catalog, Doin' It in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman's Building, October 1-Jan 28, 2012 at the Otis College of Art and Design
Otis College of Art and Design
Otis College of Art and Design is an art and design college in Los Angeles, California.The school's programs, accredited by WASC and National Association of Schools of Art and Design, include four-year BFA degrees in illustration, fine arts, graphic design, architecture, landscape design, interior...

.

The Woman's Building was the subject of a major exhibition that examined its Legacy at the Ben Maltz Gallery
Ben Maltz Gallery
The Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles is a professional art space that presents group and solo exhibitions in a variety of media. The Gallery’s main focus is showcasing contemporary art that pushes the boundaries of form and subject matter in the context of national...

 at Otis College of Art and Design
Otis College of Art and Design
Otis College of Art and Design is an art and design college in Los Angeles, California.The school's programs, accredited by WASC and National Association of Schools of Art and Design, include four-year BFA degrees in illustration, fine arts, graphic design, architecture, landscape design, interior...

 from October 2011 through February 2012. The exhibition was part of the Getty initiative, Pacific Standard Time. A website was created to accompany Doin It In Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman's Building that includes historical information including readings and video interviews with participants.

Visual artists

Numerous artists worked as staff, as exhibitors, and supporters of the Woman's Building including:

  • Marsia Alexander-Clarke
    Marsia Alexander-Clarke
    -Personal life and education:Marsia Alexander-Clarke was born in Valparaiso, Chile in 1939 and moved to the United States to attend high school in 1952, eventually becoming a United States citizen. She obtained her Bachelor of Arts at Park College, and studied at the Art Students League of New York...

  • Jerri Allyn
    Jerri Allyn
    Jerri Allyn is a feminist performance and installation artist and educator based in Los Angeles, California. Allyn earned an MA in Art and Community from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont and also attended The Feminist Studio Workshop at the Los Angeles Woman's Building.Allyn was active in the...

  • Jamie Anderson
    Jamie Anderson (musician)
    Jamie Anderson is an American female singer from Tucson, Arizona, best known as a performer of women's music. She is based in Ottawa, Ontario.Anderson first began touring the U.S. in 1987, and released her debut album in 1989. She was voted Favorite New Performer by Hot Wire in 1990 and 1991, and...

  • Margaret Atwood
    Margaret Atwood
    Margaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...

  • Kate Braverman
    Kate Braverman
    Kate Braverman is an American novelist, short story writer, and poet, originally from Los Angeles, California.-Life:Braverman has a BA in Anthropology from University of California, Berkeley and an MA in English from Sonoma State University...

  • Marilyn Bridges
    Marilyn Bridges
    Marilyn Bridges is an American photographer noted for her aerial photographs of ancient and modern landscapes of extraordinary and often religious sites....

  • Nancy Buchanan
  • Wanda Coleman
    Wanda Coleman
    Wanda Coleman is an American poet. She is known as "the L.A. Blueswoman," and "the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles."-Biography:...

  • Mary Daly
    Mary Daly
    Mary Daly was an American radical feminist philosopher, academic, and theologian. Daly, who described herself as a "radical lesbian feminist", taught at Boston College, a Jesuit-run institution, for 33 years. Daly retired in 1999, after violating university policy by refusing to allow male...

  • Maya Deren
    Maya Deren
    Maya Deren , born Eleanora Derenkowsky, was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film theorist of the 1940s and 1950s...

  • Judy Fiskin
    Judy Fiskin
    Judy Fiskin is an American artist working in photography and video, and a member of the art school faculty at California Institute of the Arts. Her videos have been screened in the Documentary Fortnight series at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and...

  • Simone Forti
    Simone Forti
    Simone Forti , a postmodern American choreographer and musician, was born in Italy but moved to the United States at a young age. Throughout her career she became known for a style of dancing and choreography that was largely based on basic everyday movements, such as games and children's...

  • Marilyn French
  • Diane Gamboa
    Diane Gamboa
    Diane Gamboa has been producing, exhibiting and curating visual art in Southern California since the 1980s. She has also been involved art education, ranging from after-school programs to college and university teaching.-Biography:...

  • Cheri Gaulke
    Cheri Gaulke
    Cheri Gaulke is a visual artist most known for her role in the Feminist Art Movement in southern California in the 1970s and her current work on gay and lesbian families...

  • JoAnn Giordano
    JoAnn Giordano
    JoAnn Giordano is an American textile artist and curator who has exhibited since 1977. An international artist, her work has shown in Mexico and Japan. She has exhibited at prestigious American venues, including the Cleveland Museum of Art...

  • Susan Griffin
    Susan Griffin
    Susan Griffin is an eco-feminist author. She describes her work as "draw[ing] connections between the destruction of nature, the diminishment of women and racism, and trac[ing] the causes of war to denial in both private and public life." She received a MacArthur grant for Peace and International...

  • Barbara Hammer
    Barbara Hammer
    Barbara Hammer is an American filmmaker in the genre of experimental films and a professor at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee.-Biography:...

  • Varnette Honeywood
    Varnette Honeywood
    Varnette Patricia Honeywood was an American painter, writer, and businesswoman whose paintings and collages depicting African American life hung on walls in interior settings for The Cosby Show after Camille and Bill Cosby had seen her art and started collecting some of her works...

  • Susan E. King
  • Barbara Kruger
    Barbara Kruger
    Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist. Much of her work consists of black-and-white photographs overlaid with declarative captions—in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed...

  • Yayoi Kusama
    Yayoi Kusama
    is a Japanese artist whose paintings, collages, soft sculptures, performance art and environmental installations all share an obsession with repetition, pattern, and accumulation...

  • Suzanne Lacy
    Suzanne Lacy
    Suzanne Lacy is an internationally known artist, educator, writer, and former public servant. She describes her work, which includes "installations, video, and large-scale performances", as focusing on "social themes and urban issues." She also served in the education cabinet of Jerry Brown, then...

  • Hung Liu
    Hung Liu
    Hung Liu in Changchun, China is a Chinese-American contemporary artist.Hung Liu was born in the People's Republic, China and emigrated to the United States in 1984. She attended Beijing Teachers College in 1975 and studied mural painting as a graduate student at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in...

  • Kate Millett
    Kate Millett
    Kate Millett is an American lesbian feminist writer and activist. A seminal influence on second-wave feminism, Millet is best known for her 1970 book Sexual Politics.-Career:...

  • Honor Moore
    Honor Moore
    Honor Moore is an American writer of poetry, creative nonfiction and plays.She is the author of three collections of poems: Red Shoes, Darling, and Memoir; two works of nonfiction, The White Blackbird and The Bishop's Daughter; and the play Mourning Pictures, which was produced on Broadway and...

  • Pat Parker
    Pat Parker
    Pat Parker was an African-American lesbian feminist poet.-Early life:Parker grew up working class poor in Third Ward, Houston, Texas, a mostly African-American part of the city...

  • Phranc
    Phranc
    Phranc is an American singer-songwriter whose career has spanned several decades.-Biography:She began her performing career in the late 1970s and early 1980s punk scene in Los Angeles...

  • Adrian Piper
    Adrian Piper
    Adrian Margaret Smith Piper is a first-generation conceptual artist and analytic philosopher who was born in New York City and lived for many years on Cape Cod, Massachusetts before emigrating from the United States...

  • Adrienne Rich
    Adrienne Rich
    Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."-Early life:...

  • Faith Ringgold
    Faith Ringgold
    Faith Ringgold is an African American artist, best known for her painted story quilts. She is professor emeritus in the University of California, San Diego visual art department.-Life and artwork:...

  • Aminah Robinson
    Aminah Robinson
    Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson is an American artist.-Life:She graduated from the Columbus Art School cum laude in 1960, studying at Ohio State University, Franklin University, and Bliss College....

  • Nancy Rosenblum
  • Rachel Rosenthal
    Rachel Rosenthal
    Rachel Rosenthal is an interdisciplinary artist, a teacher, and animal rights activist based in Los Angeles, California. She is also known for her smoothly shaven head. She is best known for her full-length performance art pieces which she has toured, with The Rachel Rosenthal Company, to numerous...

  • Betye Saar
    Betye Saar
    Betye Irene Saar is an American artist, known for her work in the field of assemblage. Her education included a time at the University of California, Los Angeles, from where she received a degree in design in 1949, and graduate studies in printmaking and education at Pasadena City College,...

  • May Sarton
    May Sarton
    May Sarton is the pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton , an American poet, novelist, and memoirist.-Biography:...

  • Barbara T. Smith
    Barbara T. Smith
    Barbara Turner Smith is an American artist known for her performance work in the late 1960s. She studied painting, art history and religion as an undergraduate at Pomona College, being graduated in 1953, and she received her MFA from University of California, Irvine in 1971...

  • Linda Vallejo
    Linda Vallejo
    Linda Vallejo Linda Vallejo, born in Los Angeles. Her mother was born in Concord, California, and her father, Adam Vallejo, was born in San Angelo, Texas, and graduated from UCLA in 1951. Her father entered the United States Air Force as a commissioned officer and the family moved to Germany. Ms....

  • Millie Wilson
    Millie Wilson
    Millie Wilson is an artist and teacher who currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Wilson is currently a faculty member at The California Institute of the Arts.Ms...

  • The Waitresses
    The Waitresses (artists)
    The Waitresses were a collaborative feminist performance art group that formed in 1977. The group consisted of artists that also worked as waitresses in Los Angeles, California. The group was active from their inception until 1985.-History:...

  • Faith Wilding
    Faith Wilding
    Faith Wilding is a Paraguayan-American multidisciplinary artist, writer and educator, widely known for her contribution to the progressive development of feminist art.Faith Wilding immigrated to the United States from Paraguay in 1961...

  • Terry Wolverton
    Terry Wolverton
    Terry Wolverton is an American novelist, memoirist, poet, and editor. Her book 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 Los Angeles Times, and was the winner of the 2003 Publishing...



Further reading

  • Wolverton, Terry. Insurgent Muse: Life and Art at the Woman's Building. San Francisco: City Lights Publishers (2002). ISBN 0872864030

External links

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