Research Guides: Special Collections and University Archives: Literature and the Arts: Miriam Schapiro Archives on Women Artists

Miriam Schapiro Archives on Women Artists

The Miriam Schapiro Archives on Women Artists works to document, preserve, and make available to researchers postwar American women’s art history. Our collections include individual artist’s papers, feminist institutional papers, and various registries of women artists. We collect various types of material including traditional paper archives, ephemera, printed materials, photographic/audio/visual media, and artifacts.

The Miriam Schapiro Archives on Women Artists was founded in 2006 by the Rutgers Institute for Women and Art (IWA) in partnership with the Rutgers University Libraries (RUL). RUL had, however, long before then begun collecting the personal papers of women artists and women's art organizations active in the United States in the second half of the 20th century. In the mid-1980s, librarians at RUL, including Françoise Puniello, then director of the Mabel Smith Douglass Library, and Ruth J. Simmons and Ronald L. Becker of Special Collections and University Archives (SC/UA), collaborated with Dr. Ferris Olin, then executive director of the Institute of Research on Women at Rutgers, to develop the holdings of RUL in this area. Early notable acquisitions included the records of the Women's Caucus for Art, the New York Feminist Art Institute, the Lucy Lippard Women’s Art Registry, and Heresies Collective, Inc.

In 2006, Ferris Olin, Director of the Margery Somers Foster Center at the Douglass Library, and Judith K. Brodsky, Professor Emerita at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, were appointed as founding director of the Rutgers Institute for Women and Art, now named the Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities. Among the programs they established (with Judy Chicago, Susan Fisher Sterling and Arlene Raven) was The Feminist Art Project (TFAP), an international collaborative initiative celebrating the feminist art movement through providing opportunities for networking and shared publicity. It was at TFAP’s inaugural event in January 2006 that Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian Marianne Gaunt announced the establishment of the Schapiro Archives, formally recognizing the ongoing collecting initiative in honor of Miriam Schapiro’s key leadership in the feminist art movement. Miriam Schapiro had donated her own papers to the archives in 2004. The Miriam Schapiro Archives on Women Artists and the Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities continue to collaborate on collection development, programs, and exhibitions. In 2009–2010, the holdings of the Miriam Schapiro Archives were showcased in a major exhibition at the Special Collections and University Archives galleries, Bridging Generations: Women Artists and Organizations from Rutgers’ Collections.

Collections in the Miriam Schapiro Archives on Women Artists

Miriam Schapiro Papers
Miriam Schapiro (1923-2015) was a feminist artist, educator, and collector. She is known as one of the mothers of feminist art of the 1970s. In addition to creating artwork celebrating women artists, she was a founding member of Heresies Collective, New York Feminist Art Institute, and brought the Feminist Art Program to the California Institute of the Arts with Judy Chicago. The collection contains correspondence, artwork, teaching files, lectures, writings, documentation of artwork and exhibitions, gallery files, photographs, audio/visual recordings, and collected material.
Joan Arbeiter Papers
Joan Arbeiter is an artist, author, and curator focusing on women in the arts. Arbeiter was educated at Douglass College and the New York Feminist Art Institute, where she took the Visual Diaries Class. Due to NYFAI, Arbeiter became involved in the Women's Art Movement by joining the Women's Caucus for Art, exhibiting and curating at Ceres Gallery, and co-writing the book Lives and Works: Talks with Women Artists (1999). The collection contains documentation of Ceres exhibits, correspondence with other women artists, and the writing, research, interviews, and editing of Lives.
Art Educators of New Jersey Records
The Art Educators of New Jersey is a professional organization working to promote and maintain visual arts programs throughout the state of New Jersey. The records in this collection represent the work of the organization from 1940 to 2016. Included among the records are meeting minutes, newsletters, financial records, publications, photographs, and scrapbooks.
Suzanne Benton Files on Positive Power
Suzanne Benton, artist, performer, sculptor, feminist, and women's advocate was born and raised in New York City. Benton was an early member of the National Organization for Women (NOW) where she led the Women in Art Task Force, a member of both the Women's Caucus for Art, Connecticut Chapter and the National Association of Women Artists, and creator of Positive Power, a series of forums that garnered a large audience exposing the public to women artists of Connecticut. The collection consists of materials from the years 1971 to 2003. Most of the files are devoted to Positive Power, a series of forums that was created by Benton and led by her as artistic director.
Judith K. Brodsky Papers
The Judith K. Brodsky Papers document her professional career as an artist and as an activist. The collection is broken into three thematic subgroups: Judith K. Brodsky, Teaching Files, and Alternative Galleries. Judith K. Brodksy files document her role as activist and advocate for women in the arts. Teaching files document her years teaching at the Mason Gross School of Art, including Art Since the 1960s. Lastly, the Alternative Galleries files contain general information collected by Brodsky on the emergence of the women's art movement of the 1970s.
Diane Burko Papers
This collection consists of the correspondence and personal papers of Diane Burko, a Philadelphia-based painter and photographer. It documents Burko's work as an artist, her tenure as a professor, and activity in local and national art organizations. Since 2006, Diane Burko's work has focused on the issue of climate change.
Center/Gallery Records
This collection contains the administrative papers of the women’s art gallery Center/Gallery, including newsletters, calendars, meeting minutes, bylaws, budgets, and grant-seeking applications of the organization. A significant portion of the collection contains newspaper clippings, flyers, and advertisements for the various exhibits, workshops, and sales held there. A limited amount of event photographs are included.
Contemporary Women Artist Files
The Contemporary Women Artists Files (1971-2015) contain materials on over 2200 women artists active in the United States. The collection is similar to the Lucy Lippard Women's Art Registry, but is continuously expanding. Document types include exhibition announcements, catalogs, correspondence, press releases, DVDs, CDs, photographs, slides, and newspaper clippings.
Mary Bartlett Cowdry Papers
Mary Bartlett Cowdry (1910-1974) was an art historian, curator, writer, and lecturer. She graduated from the New Jersey College for Women (later Douglass College) in 1933. She worked in various museums including the Newark Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and as associate director of the Smith College Museum of Art. She specialized in American art from the 19th century. Included in her papers are correspondence, published writings, scrapbooks of newspaper clippings, and items she collected. Of special interest is her collection of correspondence from artists, including two letters sent by Rosa Bonheur.
Linda L. Cunningham Collection
The collection consists of documents, books, pamphlets, and brochures that Linda Cunningham created or obtained while she was active with various feminist artists groups. Also included are photographs, negatives, and clothing. A third of the collection documents the Women Artist Visibility Event II “Now You See Us” (1986); Linda Cunningham served as national coordinator.
Mary H. Dana Women Artist Series Records
This collection documents the activities of the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series from its origins in 1971 to the present. The Exhibited Artists Files include extensive information on the artists that have participated in the series. The Operational Files contain materials related to the organization of the exhibits and the day-to-day administration of the series.
Elsa Honig Fine Papers
The papers document her founding and editorship of the Woman's Art Journal. Included are editorial correspondence with authors, articles, photocopies of 19th-century books regarding English female artists and American women artists, awards and honors documentation, and Women in Art material. Contains a catalog, letters to artists, authors, and collectors, public relations, reviews, videotapes, and photographs from the American Women Artists exhibition. Also documents her research for two books on women artists: Women in Art and Education and the Afro-American Artist.
Dorothy Gillespie Papers
Dorothy Gillespie was an artist, feminist activist, and philanthropist. Her artwork, except for a few early paintings and several happenings in the 1960s, was entirely abstract. Gillespie was influenced by Abstract Expressionism, Happenings, Pop Art, and Feminism. In the 1970s, she became involved in the Women’s Interart Center, New York Professional Women Artists, and the Feminist Art Movement. She organized exhibitions, created a collection of women’s art, compiled statistics, and took part in protests against galleries. The bright and fun style of her sculptural abstractions was a hallmark and created various public art opportunities for her. The collection documents her art production from roughly the early 1940s through 2010, her involvement in New York artists associations and galleries, her pioneer course that the New School for Social Research “Functioning in the Art World,” correspondence between her and art institutions, and her public and commercial artworks.
Guerilla Girls Posters
The Guerrilla Girls Posters contains 32 original posters created by the art collective in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Begun in 1985, the Guerilla Girls art collective was composed of women artists, queer women artists, and women artists of color who called themselves the conscience of the art world. Their printed posters and their protests used humor to highlight sexism and racism in the art world. Their posters’ topics later expanded to include political issues unrelated to the art world. This collection highlights both subject types.
Carol Hamoy Papers
Carol Hamoy is a visual artist who primarily works in mixed media sculptures that express an understanding of both her Jewish heritage and her history as a woman. Her papers document her work from the 1970s through the 2010s, as well as the various women’s art organizations she was involved in, including Ceres Gallery. They chiefly contain Hamoy’s documentation of her artwork, correspondence with curators and art institutions, photographs of her artwork, and various publications in which her work was included.
Heresies Collective, Inc.
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 to 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. The collection contains administrative records, correspondence, fundraising files, grant applications, essays by feminist scholars, proposed issues (Russian collaboration), collected book and magazine images used in various issues, photographs of artwork, and a complete run of the journal.
Heritage Quilt Project of New Jersey Records
The collection contains written and photographic documentation of 2600 New Jersey quilts made from 1830 to 1980. The project documented quilts throughout New Jersey from 1986 to 2004. Digitized images of the quilts are available on the Quilt Index at https://quiltindex.org. The Quilt Index now has over 90,000 freely-accessible and searchable records of quilts (from public and private collections, including over 250 museums) and hundreds of related stories, photos, publications, and ephemera.
Janet Hobhouse Papers
The Janet Hobhouse Papers includes personal correspondence, editorial correspondence, notes and manuscripts of published works, copies of her essays and reviews, and reviews of her books. There are also a number of photographs, a scrapbook, a taped interview, and personal miscellany. In addition to Hobhouse's papers, the collection contains the papers of her mother Frances Hobhouse, including an important set of detailed letters written by Janet to her mother when she was a teenage girl and young woman living in England, as well as Mrs. Hobhouse's diaries, photographs, and personal miscellany.
Janet Indick Papers
The Janet Indick Papers document Indick’s career as a New Jersey painter and sculptor. They contain records relating to exhibitions, donation and sale of artworks, publicity and press materials, awards, fellowships, and artistic organizations. Indick was active in the National Association of Women Artists and served as the director from 1997 to 1998. Types of materials in the collection include correspondence, exhibition catalogs, applications, donation agreements, fliers, pamphlets, postcards, newsletters, and magazines. The collection highlights Indick’s identity as a Jewish artist and as a women artist.
Alison Knowles Papers
This collection, donated by Linda White, includes correspondence documenting Allison Knowles' sculpture Book of Bean, which was installed at the Muse Gallery in Philadelphia in 1982.
Ora Lerman Papers
The Ora Lerman Papers document Lerman's career as an artist. Ora Lerman (1938-1998) was an accomplished artist, writer, and teacher during the emergence of the women's art movement in the early 1970s, and her career became part of that movement. The papers span the period from 1955 to 1998 and reflect the life and work of the artist and professor during her adult life in New York City and her activities in the New York City Chapter of the Women's Caucus for Art. Fewer documents cover her childhood in Kentucky and college years in Ohio. A small number of items, such as family photographs, date prior to 1955.
Lucy Lippard Women’s Art Registry
The Lucy Lippard Women's Art Registry began as a slide registry for the Ad Hoc Women Artist's Committee. Lippard was a member of the Ad Hoc Committee, which was formed in response to the Whitney museum's lack of women artists and the Art Worker's 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 the ignorance of women artists. The collection contains documents related to individual artists and feminist organizations such as West East Bag, Ad Hoc Committee of Women Artists, Women Artists Visibility Event, Martha Rosler, Adrian Piper, and countless others.
Sheila Marbain Papers
Sheila Marbain was a master printer who created prints for artists through Maurel Studios. She came to prominence during the Pop Art Movement and printed for artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Marisol, William Wegman, and Helen Frankenthaler. The collection documents her art collection, various silkscreen printing techniques, and her retrospective exhibit at the Zimmerli Art Museum in 1990.
Rita Myers Papers
Papers documenting Rita Myers' art career. Myers received her BFA from Douglass College, Rutgers University and her MA from Hunter College. Since 1975, Rita Myers has created a body of large-scale, multi-media installations that create highly theatrical, metaphorical spaces from a fusion of video, text, sound, and sculptural and natural forms. Juxtaposing elements of landscape and architecture, these formalized, symbolic environments function as contemplative sites that resonate with evocations of the ritualistic and the mystical. The collection contains preparatory drawings, correspondence, biographical files, and publications.
National Association of Women Artists
The National Association of Women Artists (NAWA) encourages, supports, and promotes the work of professional women artists. The organization fosters public awareness of women artists through exhibitions, historical archives, and educational and outreach programs. Established in 1889, NAWA is the oldest professional women's fine arts organization in the United States. It continues to provide a forum for women artists to share ideas and to advance parity of participation for women in the art world. The collection contains annual exhibition catalogs, membership records, correspondence, administrative files, and visual media including scrapbooks. The collection documents the association's activities after 1923, when a board of directors was founded, and continues to the present.
New Jersey Women’s Slide Registry
The New Jersey Women's Slide Registry was founded in August 1973. It contains administrative files, artists' files, and slides. By 1986, over 500 women artists were represented in this registry. Artists' files contain materials sent with the slides, including resumes, statements, photographs, and catalogs. From 1973 to1977, the registry held four exhibits of works selected from the holdings.
New York Feminist Art Institute Records
The records of the New York Feminist Art Institute span the periods circa 1970 to 1990 and 2005 to 2010. The records document the foundation and the daily operation of this alternative art school, fundraising, events, curriculum, student projects, as well as many individual women visual artists and feminist activists. Materials donated between 2005 and 2010 detail the efforts to conduct oral histories with founding members and students. Document types include correspondence, financial records, publications, photographic prints, slides, audiotapes, videotapes, original artwork, artifacts, and compact discs.
Gloria Orenstein Collection on Women Artists
The collection is comprised of oral history interviews with women artists conducted by students of the feminist historian Gloria Orenstein between 2006 and 2012. The artists speak about their work, gender, and sexism in the art world. Of special interest are additional materials provided by the interviewee Anne Gauldin documenting the feminist performance groups The Waitresses and Sisters of Survival, which were active in the 1970s and 1980s.
Deborah Remington Papers
The Deborah Remington Papers chiefly contain the visual artist’s personal and professional correspondence, as well as an extensive documentation of her artwork found in detailed lists, photographs, and institutional sales and exhibition records. Included in the collection are photographs of her trip to Japan, which greatly influenced her artistic style, her creative and school writings from her time at the San Francisco Institute of the Arts, and her legal struggles with Cooper Union.
Faith Ringgold Collection
The Faith Ringgold Collection (1967-1999) reflects many aspects of its creator's experiences as a teacher, artist, consultant, and curator. It consists primarily of documentation of Ringgold's August 1998 curriculum vitae (CV) and includes a selection of publications by and about the artist plus catalogs and promotional materials from solo, performance, and group exhibitions. Documents reflecting Ringgold's lectures, work-related correspondence, participation in conferences, programs, panels, television and radio appearances, committees, and juries appear alongside records regarding awards Ringgold received and the public and private commissions she undertook.
Rutgers University Collection of Women Artists’ Visual Diaries
The collection is composed of 23 sketchbooks from feminist artist and educator Nancy Azara's class "Consciousness-Raising, Visual Diaries, Art-Making Workshop" at the New York Feminist Art Institute (1979-1990). The consciousness-raising sessions were meant to be group talks about women’s issues, as well as women in art issues. Azara had her students speak one-by-one in a consciousness session while the other students drew in their sketchbooks. Azara encouraged the students to think of the sketchbooks as visual diaries and to strive to find some kind of authentic mark-making that they could see in their other work.
Ann Sperry Papers
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. The collection documents her work, teaching, and exhibitions with materials such as sketchbooks, photographs, slides, correspondence, newspaper clippings, and exhibition catalogs.
Marilyn Symmes Collection on Phyllis Seltzer
Marilyn Symmes collected materials documenting Phyllis Seltzer’s artwork from 1973 to 2011. Seltzer is a painter and a printmaker who depicts scenes of city life. Specifically, the collection emphasizes Seltzer’s various forms of unique printmaking techniques, including heat transfer, ozalid process, and pochoir printing. Symmes developed and mastered heat transfer printing. Included in the collection are correspondence, exhibition announcements, artist statements, an interview with Symmes, publications, printmaking instructions, and various forms of visual materials.
The Feminist Art Project (TFAP) Collection
The Feminist Art Project (TFAP) was created by feminists Ferris Olin, Judith Brodsky, Judy Chicago, Susan Fisher Sterling, and Arlene Raven in 2006 in conjunction with the Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities. TFAP aims to celebrate the history and legacy of the Feminist Art Movement, to celebrate the work of contemporary feminist artists, and to combat the erasure of women artists from the various narratives of art history. TFAP is an online resource https://feministartproject.rutgers.edu/ for scholars, feminists, and educators. The collection documents the various strategies and activities the project utilizes to create and foster a feminist art community. It contains printouts from the online calendar of events, books, exhibition announcements, materials sent by artists, and feminist art ephemera.
Women’s Caucus for Art
The Women's Caucus for Art is a national organization of over 3,500 women in the visual arts professions. The WCA was founded in 1972 at the annual meeting of the College Art Association (CAA) held in San Francisco, where a group of women art historians and artists met to discuss gender-based issues in the visual arts. The collection contains administrative files of the organization, documentation of the annual conferences, local and national chapters files, correspondence, compiled statistics of women in the arts, photographs of events and artwork, and cassettes of lectures at the conferences.The collection contains records from 1972 to 2010.
Women’s Caucus for Art, New York Chapter Records
During the late 1970s, Women's Caucus for Art chapters were founded across the country in order to better share information, offer support, and pursue smaller-scale WCA goals such as exhibitions and combining slide registries. The New York City Chapter was one such chapter, founded in 1978; these records document the chapter’s activities and programming from its founding to its dissolution in 2001. Document types include administrative files of the organization, documentation of the annual conferences, correspondence, photographs of events and artwork, and cassettes of lectures at the conferences.