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Feminist Art Program

decade


1970s

1970

Judy Chicago founds the Feminist Art Project, a collaborative educational experiment, at Fresno State College (now California State University, Fresno) along with 15 aspiring women artists known as the California Girls.

1970

Miriam Schapiro meets Judy Chicago and invites her to cofound the Feminist Art Program at CalArts.

1971

Judy Chicago leaves Fresno and accepts a teaching position at the newly formed CalArts. She cofounds the Feminist Art Program at CalArts with Miriam Schapiro, and many of the Fresno students follow her there.

1971

Judy Chicago begins working on Womanhouse with Feminist Art Program participants.

1971–72 1971

Miriam Schapiro participates in the historic Womanhouse installation with Judy Chicago and 21 other women artists, many of whom are students at the Feminist Art Program. For her contribution, Schapiro and her assistant create The Dollhouse using old liquor crates to create a six-room house featuring a parlor, a kitchen, a movie star’s bedroom, a harem room, a nursery, and an artist’s studio with a male model made of stuffed fabric and a miniature version of Sixteen Windows on an easel.

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1972

In January and February, Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, and 21 other women artists, many from the Feminist Art Program, participate in Womanhouse, a collaborative art installation staged in an abandoned Hollywood mansion.

Experience the _Womanhouse_ Kitchen. Excerpt from the documentary film *Womanhouse*, 1974, directed by Johanna Demetrakas. The Getty Research Institute, 2896-034. © Johanna Demetrakas.

decade


2010s

In this 2017 video, Judy Chicago explains her dissatisfaction with the male-dominated arts education she received at UCLA and how it inspired her to develop the Feminist Art Program at Fresno State College and the *Womanhouse* project.

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Judy Chicago Miriam Schapiro CalArts California Chicago Illinois Los Angeles Valencia Womanhouse

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Stories

Consciousness-Raising and Collaboration

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Judy Chicago Joe Goode Miriam Schapiro Art Institute of Chicago Barney’s Beanery CalArts California Chicago Chouinard Ferus Gallery Fullerton La Cienega Los Angeles Rolf Nelson Gallery SFMOMA UCLA Valencia Western Avenue Feminist Art Program Students Five Womanhouse