Philadelphia Focuses on Women in the Visual Arts

Civic Center Museum, Philadelphia: May - April, 1974

The 1974 Philadelphia citywide project FOCUS on Women in the Visual Arts—and its flagship exhibition WOMEN’S WORK: AMERICAN ART 1974 at the Museum of the Philadelphia Civic Center—was a milestone regional and national survey examining the breadth of contemporary practice by American women artists. Featuring works by dozens of post-war innovators across painting, sculpture, works on paper, and mixed media, the project challenged gender discrimination in major cultural institutions by demonstrating the technical rigor and stylistic pluralism of women artists working outside male-dominated canons.