powers. Amaya proclaimed that the high quality of choices was ôtruly amazing,ö but art critic Douglas Davis (p. 77) contended that the quality of the work was less relevant than the fact that the exhibition was nothing less than a revolution in political, aesthetic, and consciousness structures and therefore mattered more in form than in content.
The revolutionary nature of this exhibit is critical to an understanding of its meaning and value. In commenting on women as artists, Liane Curtis (p. 223) has pointed out that women artists prior to 1930 were marginalized outside of the parameters of most arts associations and most formal art institutions as well, such as museums and galleries. Equally significant is the fact that training in the arts was viewed historically with suspicion by many feminist advocates of rigorous education for women. This, says Curtis (p. 223), was because ôthey believed that only training in math, the sciences, and history would develop a womanÆs intellect and capacity to reason. This view paralleled that of political and social activists of the Progressive Era who saw activities in the art as trivial distractions from more important issues.ö
From the 1930s forward, women (both feminist and non-feminist in their ideological orientation) have become much more assertive and demanding in their claims to recognition as full
participants in all of the arts. Lucy R. Lippard has said ôitÆs not just nostalgia that keeps calling me back to the pioneering feminist art of the '70s, but the ever-more obvious affinities with whatÆs going on in the '90s. It seems politically and aesthetically crucial that the work done then not be forgotten now, and that its connections to the succeeding decades be clarified" (in Wei, p. 35).
The feminist art movement occurred at what Linda Nochlin (in Broude and Garrard, p. 137) has characterized as the intersection of self and history. Women in the 19...