Group 1: "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?"

Thirty years ago, Linda Nochlin, a professor of art history, posed the question, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" Her article provides one answer to the question, which has been taken up by many scholars since then. This web site will investigate this question, reviewing contemporary scholarship on the question of women and the canon of "great art," and will perhaps provide new answers and insights.

This web site will document and analyze women as artists and as they have been represented in (that is, have been the subjects of) European art from the 14th through the 17th centuries.

This web site will explore the challenges and accomplishments of women composers and performers from the Middle Ages to the present.

Weaving, spinning, and sewing have traditionally been seen as feminine activities; the products of these activities, however, have rarely been seen as high art. This web site explores the significance of weaving in social constructs of gender; textiles as art; and textiles in art.

This web sites analyzes images of women in ancient sculpture; documents the work of early twentieth-century African-American sculptors; explores the work of Native American potters; and investigates the concerns, techniques, and subject matter of contemporary sculptors.

While there have been relatively few women choreographers and company directors, women were central to twentieth-century rethinking of dance form and meaning, from Isadora Duncan, to Maria Tallchief, to Martha Graham, and beyond.

Art is always potentially subversive and challenging to the status quo--witness the recent struggles over the National Endowment for the Arts. This web site investigates some of the more blunt challenges to cultural norms: lesbian art, tampon art, and performance art, to name only a few.

Group 8: Women, Film, and "the Gaze"

Much recent feminist scholarship has investigated the phenomenon of "the gaze," the dominant and objectifying (implicitly male) perspective of the spectator in film (as well as other arts). This web site investigates theories of gender and spectatorship while documenting women in/and film: as film-makers, actors, and characters.

A handful of women became famous in the twentieth century documenting historical events and critiquing cultural norms, including Margaret Bourke-White , Cindi Sherman, Annie Liebowitz, Pamela Shields. This web site provides an introduction to the work of women photographers.

The Desert Is No Lady, a 1995 film produced in Tucson, documented the relationship between women artists and writers and their sense of place. This web site continues that exploration, looking at how the particular features (geographically and culturally) of the southwest U.S. and Mexico have influenced local women artists.