HISTORY AND BACKGROUND OF EXHIBITIONS

Prior to the 1990s, the Southern California area had few exhibits in mainstream institutions aimed at drawing attention to women artists. This is in spite of the region's strong feminist roots that included politically active artists like Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, who developed alternative educational programs such as The Fresno Feminist Art Program, the Womanhouse exhibition, and The Feminist Art Program at Cal Arts in the early 1970s.

Other initiatives such as The Los Angeles Council of Women Artists, the Joan of Art seminars organized by June Wayne, Womanspace, The Woman’s Building, Gallery 707, Grandview I and II, The Feminist Studio Workshop, The Center for Feminist Art Historical Studies, and DoubleX flourished in the 1970s and 80s in an ongoing effort to provide additional visibility and recognition for women artists.

The Multiple Vantage Points exhibition, organized and co-sponsored by the Southern California Women’s Caucus for Art (SCWCA) and the Southern California Council of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (SCC NMWA), is part of the ongoing efforts begun in 1968 to organize important surveys of the work of women artists.

The list below highlights the fact that female curators and art historians have played the primary role in organizing significant group exhibitions of women’s art seen in this region during the last 38 years.

1968: 25 California Women of Art at the Lytton Galleries of Contemporary Art organized by Josine Ianco-Starrels. It was the first west coast show focused on women artists.

1972: 21 Artists: Invisible/Visible at the Long Beach Museum of Art curated by Dextra Frankel (also the curator of the Multiple Vantage Points).

1976: Women Artists: 1550-1950, curated by Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

1993: Sugar 'n Spice curated by Noriko Gamblin for the Long Beach Museum of Art profiling women multimedia artists.

1994-95: Muses, curated by Betty Ann Brown for the Armory Center for the Arts. A collaborative exhibition of nine visual artists with nine writers.

1995: A Generation of Mentors, a traveling exhibition curated by Helen Alameda Lewis and Josine Ianco-Starrels at Mount St. Mary's College, Jose Drudis-Baida Art Gallery. Featured the work of 12 women artists as role models. Traveled from the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.

1995: Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945, proposed by Patricia Trenton and mounted by the Autry Museum of Western Heritage. It documented more than 100 paintings of Western art by women, including those of Native American, African, Mexican, and Asian descent, from 1890 to the end of World War II.

1995: Division of Labor: "Women's Work" in Contemporary Art, organized by Lydia Yee for The Bronx Museum of Arts and traveling to MOCA in Los Angeles.

1995-96: Exploring a Movement: Feminist Visions in Clay: A Multi-Site Exhibition of Feminist Ceramics Presented in Four Themes curated by Jo Lauria in 1995-96.

1996: Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago's Dinner Party in Feminist Art History, curated by Amelia Jones for the UCLA Armand Hammer Museum of Art.

2002: Art/Women/California 1950-2000: Parallels and Intersections, by Diana Burgess Fuller and Daniela Salvioni for the San Jose Museum of Art. Although not held in Southern California, this show examined the impact that 90 women artists working in California in the second half of the twentieth century had on broadening the definition of art. It focused a great deal on the technological advances that were part of the defense and aerospace industries of this area and so impacted Southern California women's art in the 1960s thorough the 1980s.

2007: Multiple Vantage Points: Southern California Women Artists, 1980 – 2006, curated by Dextra Frankel for the Southern California Women’s Caucus for Art and the Southern California Council for the National Museum for Women in the Arts at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Barnsdall Art Park.