Art Library Exhibitions Spaces and Special Events

Art + Feminism is a campaign improving coverage of cis and transgender women, feminism and the arts on Wikipedia. It is a do-it-yourself and do-it-with others platforms that allows enthusiasts to fill in the gaps that are present in the coverage of knowledge about women, gender, and feminism. In conjunction with this initiative, this exhibition intends to highlight a few women artists from Rutgers University’s Miriam Schapiro Archive of Women Artists. These artists made a dent in the art world but have no presence or very little presence on Wikipedia. This exhibition intends to rectify that and the items displayed here will hopefully aid those who wish to create Wikipedia pages for these artists or foundations. In the spotlight from the University Archives are the Heresies Collective, Ann Sperry, the New York Feminist Art Institute and Lucy Lippard Women’s Art Registry.

Alexandra Lobo is a freelance illustrator, designer, and printmaker currently residing in New Jersey. She attended the Fashion Institute of Technology where she received a degree in Illustration. She currently attends the Mason Gross School of Art at Rutgers with a concentration in Printmaking and Design. On display are works that weave together her interest in different artistic disciplines. They range from handcrafted artist books, letterpress, lithographs, screen prints, and digital prints.

New York Feminist Art Institute (NYFAI) was founded in 1979 (to 1990) by women artists, educators and professionals. NYFAI offered workshops and classes, held performances and exhibitions and special events that contributed to the political and cultural import of the women's movement at the time. The women's art school focused on self-development and discovery as well as art.

The Lucy Lippard Women's Art Registry began as a slide registry for the Ad Hoc Women Artists Committee. Lippard was a member of of the Ad Hoc committee which was formed, first in response to the Whitney museum's lack of women artists and second in response to the Art Workers Coalition lack of focus on gender in the art world. The women artist slide registry also began collecting catalogs, announcements, and ephemera in order to combat ignorance of women artists.

Heresies Collective was founded in 1976 by Patsy Beckert, Joan Braderman, Mary Beth Edelson, Harmony Hammond, Elizabeth Hess, Joyce Kozloff, Arlene Ladden, Lucy Lippard, Mary Miss, Marty Pottenger, Miriam Schapiro, Joan Snyder, Elke Solomon, Pat Steir, May Stevens, Susana Torre, Elizabeth Weatherford, Sally Webster, and Nina Yankowitz. The collective of feminists published 27 issues of the journal Heresies from 1977-1993. Each issue was centered on a specific theme that was explored by rotating editorial collectives. The goal of the journal was to stimulate conversation about the intersection of art, feminism, and politics.

Ann Sperry was a visual artist who primarily worked in sculptural mediums. There were two forces that were dominant in her work: an effort to bend, paint, and twist metal to look as delicate as paper, and a conscious gendering of semi-abstract shapes. On display are select exhibition catalogs, correspondences, and photographs of her work that were exhibited at the Denise Rene show and works from her involvement as a designer in the opera The Martyrdom of St. Magnus presented at the Aspen Music Festival in 1978.