Woman's Building People

>>>

Faces & Voices

A quote from Judy Chicago, one of the founders of the 1973 Woman's Building:

"One day, while we were working in Womanhouse, one of the women in the Feminist Program returned from a thrift shop expedition carrying an old book. It was an out-of-print edition about something called Woman's Building, which none of us had ever heard about. Opening the faded, gold-trimmed volume, we excitedly discovered that there had been a building in the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago, designed by a woman architect, established and run by a Board of Lady Managers, filled with work by women around the world, including a large mural by 'our' Mary Cassatt, as she was referred to by the proud women who organized the building and commissioned her mural. As we examined the book I was struck by the quality of consciousness evidenced by the women involved in the building and by the fact that they had apparently unearthed a good deal of historical material about women artists."

(Through the Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist by Judy Chicago. Doubleday 1973, p. 150.)

A quote about Sheila de Bretteville, one of the founders of the 1973 Woman's Building:

"Saying strength without a fist, the eyebolt is increasingly familiar to us as we begin to work more and more in non-traditional professions and build our own space. This necklace was originally designed by Sheila Levrant de Bretteville. Sheila made the first one for her colleagues, Arlene Raven and Judy Chicago when they started the Feminist Studio Workshop in 1972. Since that time, she has given them to other women with whom she shares a vision of the creation of women's culture. Members of the Feminist Studio Workshop of 1978-79 have made these necklaces (in an edition of 500) in celebration of the 5th anniversary of the Woman's Building in Los Angeles. The context in which we are making and sharing these necklaces gives them (and the common hardware from which they are made) added history, meaning, and symbolic content, while honoring things of beauty and use that are readily available to us all. As we build our culture, let us wear these as a symbol for ourselves and a signal to each other."

(From the package for the necklace.)

.....

Poster designed by Sheila Levrant de Bretteville for Women in Design conference, 1975.

Arlene Raven and Sheila de Bretteville at the celebration party to celebrate the 5th Anniversary of the Woman's Building.

....

A quote by Arlene Raven, one of the founders of the 1973 Woman's Building:

"As an act against the historical erasure of women's art and an acknowledgment of the heritage we were beginning to recover, Judy Chicago, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville and I named the public center for women's culture we envisioned and would open on November 28, 1973, the Woman's Building. For several years there had been protests over the unfair exclusion of women's art from exposure in Los Angeles museums and the art press. In 1970, when no woman was asked to participate in the Art and Technology show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Council of Women Artists demonstrated against the museum. June Wayne's Tamarind Workshop conducted a survey of press coverage of women's exhibitions; they received little coverage, and what did exist was often derisive. Wayne's Joan of Art Workshops taught women artists the mechanics of making a professional presentation of their work to galleries and explored the business aspect of being an artist. Womanspace gallery opened in 1972 to give women's art more exposure. When the Woman's Building opened the next year, Womanspace had joined other galleries, groups, women's businesses, and feminist professionals in taking space in a large modern-style building in downtown Los Angeles." ( From At Home exhibition catalog.)