Today’s art world has embraced visionaries such as Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Miranda July and Shirin Neshat. But only a generation ago, it was extremely rare to find female artists in major museums and galleries. Enacting that change was nothing short of a revolution. Director Lynn Hershman was an active participant in this feminist art movement and spent the past forty years chronicling its breakthroughs on video. Now she’s shaped that archive into a remarkable cultural history that stirs up vital questions about politics, equality and freedom of expression.
Her story begins in the sixties, when the winds of liberation drew attention to gender inequality in the art world and everywhere else. The era’s radicalism prompted one Jewish art school graduate – inspired by the Black Panthers – to take the name Judy Chicago. She and Miriam Schapiro founded a women’s arts program at the California Institute of the Arts. Meanwhile, in New York, the work of women’s collective A.I.R. Publications – such as “Chrysalis” and “Heresies” – became tools for building awareness. As critic B. Ruby Rich recalls, “Everyone’s opinions counted equally. That was both wonderful and a total nightmare.” Factional in-fighting was another sign of the times. —TIFF
