Ask art aficionados to name a woman artist they admire and they will probably mention 19th century Impressionists Mary Cassatt or Berthe Morisot. The more avant-garde might mention Georgia O’Keefe, famous for her vivid – some say sexual-depictions of flowers. Second-wave feminists, active in the 1970s and ‘80s, might well name Judy Chicago whose iconic 1970s work, ‘The Dinner Party’, is regarded as the first epic piece of feminist art. But who among them would know the works of Julika Rudelius, Parastou Forouhar or Emily Jacir?
These three artists – from Germany, Iran and Palestine, respectively – have their works currently on display, along with more than 100 other feminist artists from 50 countries at New York’s Brooklyn Museum of Art’s new exhibition, ‘Global Feminisms’.
The sometimes-startling exhibition has been organised to commemorate the opening of the Elizabeth A Sackler Center for Feminist Art, the first public space of its kind in the US to showcase works by women artists.
It is also the first international exhibition exclusively dedicated to feminist art from 1990 to the present. There are works in all media, from painting and sculpture to video and performance, as the show strives to present a large sampling of contemporary feminist art from a global perspective. “In (the exhibition) we are attempting to construct a definition of ‘feminist’ art that is as broad and flexible as possible,” said curator Maura Reilly.
Incidentally, the show also marks the 30th anniversary of the first major exhibition that explored the role of women in the history of Western art, ‘Women Artists: 1550 - 1950’. The exhibition had been organised by Dr Linda Nochlin, noted art historian and Professor of Modern Art at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts, and presented at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1977.
Feminist artist and philanthropist Elizabeth Sackler has said that she would like the Center to serve as a pivotal point for discourse about feminism and feminist art.
“My dearest hope is that it will be a hostess to all women, especially those who don’t identify as feminists or feminist artists, women who live in a post-feminist world,” Sackler said. Central to the Sackler Center is the permanent installation of Judy Chicago’s ‘The Dinner Party’.
Symbolic of the history of women in Western civilisation, the piece comprises a 48-foot triangular table with 39 place settings, each commemorating a mythical or historical female figure. Among them are Theodora of Byzantium, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Virginia Woolf. The settings consist of embroidered runners, gold chalices and utensils, and China-painted porcelain plates with raised central motifs rendered in styles appropriate to the women being honoured.
Achievements of women 
Thus, it honours the achievements of women over the millennia in craft forms associated with the domestic,or feminine realm. Names of another 999 women have been inscribed in gold on the white tiled floor below the triangular table.The purpose of the work, Chicago has said, is “to end the ongoing cycle of omission in which women were written out of the historical record”.
A rotating gallery augments Chicago’s powerful work. ‘Pharaohs, Queens and Goddesses’ is the first exhibit in the gallery. Dedicated to powerful Egyptian women, the central object is a granite head of Hatshepsut, one of the handful of female pharaohs in Ancient Egypt and also one of the 39 women represented with a plate at the ‘The Dinner Party’.
In another exhibit, ‘An Art of our Own: Women Ceramicists from the Permanent Collection’, more than 30 female artists have showcased 80 ceramic objects, ranging from vases to tea sets. Although the vast majority of the objects are by 20th century artists, there are also some earlier examples of ‘China Painting’ by largely anonymous women belonging to the Aesthetic Movement of the late19th and early 20th centuries. Works by Native American potters are also included.
Besides, witnessing the historic opening of the Sackler Center, aficionados in New York got an opportunity to be part of a lively two-day symposium, ‘The Feminist Future: Theory and Practice in the Visual Arts’ at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) this April. The symposium focused on “feminist activism in the 1960s and ’70s; the backlash and revisionism of the ’80s and ’90s; and where feminism stands in practice and scholarship”.
Women’s  exclusion
Dr Nochlin — credited with almost single-handedly exposing women’s exclusion from the canon of art history in her 1971 article, ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ was one of the panellists at the symposium.
“Since the time the exhibit (‘Women Artists: 1550 - 1950’, 1977) opened 30 years ago, gender studies has penetrated all ways of looking at art. So, even though it’s true that many aspects of society have not changed much — or enough – in the intervening years, it is also true that consciously or unconsciously people now make work that was impossible before feminism,” she said. But the Big Apple cannot take all the credit for showcasing feminist creativity. At the Los Angeles-based Museum of Contemporary Art, ‘WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution’, recently opened to an enthusiastic response.This international retrospective of 1970s feminist art features work by more than 120 artists, including Judy Chicago.
Among its major themes are ‘Family Stories’, ‘Knowledge as Power’, and ‘Making Art History’. The exhibition will later travel to New York and Washington DC.
It may seem that feminist art is the rage in the US this year. But till as recently as 2005, an updated poster (original was made in 1989) by a group of women artists asked the question, “do women have to be naked to get into the Met?’’The poster revealed that less than three per cent of the modern art holdings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art were by women, down from five per cent over a decade ago.
And a 2006 article in ‘The Village Voice’ noted that out of nearly 300 one-person gallery shows held last year, only 23 percent were by women.
That’s why initiatives like the Sackler Center are garnering such accolades. When it comes to art, it seems women are finally taking their rightful place at the table.