Institute History
Description
In the 1960s, women artists formed the Women Artists in Revolution (WAR), a coalition to cope with exclusion from museum exhibitions, art journals, educational literature, and historical documentation. The cost of this exclusion is still felt today. In 2006, even after the success of women artists such as Barbara Kreuger, Shirin Neshat, and Cindy Sherman, a poll of Whitney Museum patrons found most of them could not name three women artists.
Deftly combining reportage and personal memoir, !Women Art Revolution is a seminal and groundbreaking documentary excavating the evolution of the Feminist Art Movement in America. Director Lynn Hershman Leeson was an active participant in this movement and has spent 42 years documenting it. Through intimate interviews, provocative art, and rarely seen historical film and video footage, she illuminates what many historians feel is the most significant art movement of the late-twentieth century.
!Women Art Revolution is part of a transmedia project that includes RAW/WAR, a website and participatory installation.