Women Choose Women

New York Cultural Center: January 12 - February 18, 1973

Women in the Arts (WIA) was a pioneering feminist artists' advocacy group founded in New York in 1971 to combat systemic gender discrimination in major cultural institutions. The organization achieved historical acclaim by conceiving and organizing the landmark 1973 exhibition Women Choose Women at the New York Cultural Center—the first major museum-scale presentation dedicated entirely to women artists. In an April 1972 open letter to The Brooklyn Museum, The New York Cultural Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, they made there case as follows:

“Women In the Arts, an organization of more than 300 members, today proposes a revolutionary concept of museum exhibitions. Past exhibition programming has been impoverished by discriminatory practices against women… We believe an expanding art audience deserves to see the work of an expanding community of artists. Therefore, we propose the exhibition WOMEN CHOOSE WOMEN…selected by the membership of Women In the Arts to include the largest number of known and unknown talents… It has become clear that the art community wants and needs to cooperate with museum officials in the formulation of museum policy. WOMEN CHOOSE WOMEN is a unique project that reflects this critical need and serves as a model for more inclusive and stimulating exhibition planning.”