Woman's Building, Feminist art gallery in downtown Los Angeles, United States
The Woman's Building was a nonprofit feminist arts and education center in Los Angeles, founded in 1973 by Judy Chicago, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville and Arlene Raven. In 1975 it moved into a former Standard Oil Company building from the 1920s, converted in the 1940s into a warehouse of three open floors suited to classes and exhibitions. It closed in 1991.
Artists Judy Chicago, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, and Arlene Raven founded the space in 1973 as both a school and exhibition venue. The center remained active from 1973 until 1991, shaping the direction of women's art during those decades.
The name refers to a building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, which the founders adopted in November 1973 for their rented space near MacArthur Park. Members made about 500 eyebolt-on-a-chain necklaces in 1978–79 for the fifth anniversary, designed by Sheila Levrant de Bretteville to mean "strength without a fist". In 1979 the center issued a national call for the Great American Lesbian Art Show.
The center closed in 1991, so there is no venue to tour; its papers and artists' files, covering 1970 to 1992, are held in the Woman's Building archives at Otis College of Art and Design. Researchers should arrange access in advance rather than expect a walk-in gallery.
The building's name refers not to its own history but to a structure at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In 1978 Kate Millett's statue, made for her work Naked Ladies, was installed on the roof to mark the center's fifth anniversary.
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