Toward a History of Feminism, Art, and Social Movements in the United States

Abstract

With that call to arms West East Bag (WEB), an International Liaison Network for Women Artists, began in September of 1971. One contemporaneous description of the women’s liberation movement in the United States described it as “linked only by the numerous journals, newsletters and cross country travelers.” WEB, a “bicoastal national organizing tool and newsletter that networked women artists nationally, encouraging the creation of registries and protests in other cities,” created those connections for feminist artists outside the art world centers of New York and Los Angeles. In recent years, while there has been a sharp increase in scholarly interest in feminist art, WEB seldom garners more than a brief mention. However, as Mary Garrard notes, in the single most important study thus far of feminist art as a social movement, “the story of feminist networks and organizations in the visual artists is . . . a chapter in the larger women movement.” Garrard’s essay briefl y traces a number of themes over the course of the 1970s from a personal perspective, but she notes the need, which I hope to address in this essay, for “a case study of the complicated dynamic of political movements and social progress” that resulted in a feminist art movement that existed well beyond New York and Los Angeles. In exploring feminist art as a social movement, I draw on a framework recently proposed by Rebecca Kolins Givan, Kenneth M. Roberts, and Sarah A.