This post was originally published on artnews.com
In a landmark 1971 essay published by ARTnews, the art historian Linda Nochlin pointedly asked, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Her piece was “an encouragement, an announcement of an arrival, a gift to women artists of a shared but previously little-known past, and a declaration of a future,” wrote artist Mira Schor in a recent message to ARTnews. For this year’s Women’s History Month, ARTnews contacted Schor and eight other women artists who experienced the feminist movement of the 1960s and ’70s in the United States to discuss the role of feminism today. Their thoughts, which have been lightly edited and condensed, follow.
Most interviewees addressed concerns over the second Trump administration’s broad agenda, in particular that his anti-DEI policy could mean women, especially women of color, and their art will be progressively removed from view at national institutions after finally gaining recognition in the mainstream art world.
It is a bitter state of affairs, given that this recognition has come too little and too late for many. To name a few, Chinese-American artist Hung Liu (1948–2021) died shortly before her retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery; Chicana artist Yolanda López (1942–2021) died months before her first large retrospective, at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; and Indigenous artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith died soon after the art world began honoring her with both a major retrospective and a survey of contemporary Native art that she curated.
“Things really are so much better,” Schor, who has kept her copy of Nochlin’s 1971 article, told ARTnews. “But full parity in terms of perceived cultural importance and recognition, I think, is a mirage; the perception of success, of mission accomplished, is simultaneous with the constant erasure of history, making Women’s History Month still a necessary occasion to remind women more than anybody else of what women have achieved in every field, including the arts.”