Archives and Resources for Feminist Research

The Fales Library & Special Collections, New York University
The Fales Library & Special Collections houses the Fales Collection of rare books and manuscripts, the Downtown Collection, the Food and Cookery Collection, the Riot Grrrl Collection, and the general Special Collections of the NYU Libraries.

A.I.R. Gallery Archives
The influential A.I.R. (Artists in Residence, Inc.) Gallery was founded in 1972 as the first artist-run, not-for-profit cooperative gallery for women artists in the United States by the following women: Dotty Attie, Rachel bas-Cohain, Judith Bernstein, Blythe Bohnen, Maude Boltz, Agnes Denes, Daria Dorosh, Loretta Dunkelman, Mary Grigoriadis, Harmony Hammond, Laurace James, Nancy Kitchell, Louise Kramer, Anne Healy, Rosemarie Mayer, Patsy Norvell, Howardena Pindell, Nancy Spero, Susan Williams, and Barbara Zucker.

Jacki Apple Papers
Jacki Apple (1941-2022) was a visual, performance and media artist, writer, contributing editor to High Performance magazine, producer, and a professor at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

Martha Wilson Papers, 1950-2021
Martha Wilson is an artist and the Founding Director of Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc., a multifaceted arts organization active from 1976 to the present.

The Museum of Modern Art Archives
The MoMA Archives is an internationally recognized research center for modern and contemporary art. The Archives collects, preserves, and makes accessible nearly 90 years’ worth of the Museum’s historical records, 40 years’ worth of MoMA PS1 records, and other primary source documents concerning art and cultural history in the 20th and 21st centuries, including private archives and papers of artists, galleries, dealers, art historians, critics, and others.

Trisha Brown Notebooks and Papers
Series I includes twenty-four of Trisha Brown's personal notebooks, dating from 1971 to 2005, arranged chronologically. Series II represents a chronology of Brown's dances from 1961 to 1979. Series III includes additional miscellaneous notes, photographs, and correspondence from other parts of Brown's career.

Just Above Midtown (JAM) Archives
Just Above Midtown, or JAM, was an influential New York art gallery from 1974 to 1986. Founded by Linda Goode Bryant, JAM served more as a laboratory than a traditional gallery and helped to launch the careers of many artists well-known today, such as David Hammons, Maren Hassinger, Senga Nengudi, Edgar Heap of Birds, Lorraine O’Grady, Dawoud Bey, and Lorna Simpson. This archive comprises the records produced and collected by JAM staff and artists, including documentation of general operations, exhibitions, public programs, and publications.

Howardena Pindell Correspondence and Research Materials
The collection consists of research materials and correspondence collected largely in 1977 in preparation for an article, "Alternative Space: Artists' Periodicals," Print Collector's Newsletter (vol. 8) September-October 1977. A major part of the article consists of a "Chronology" of artists' periodicals from 1900 through 1977.

Carolee Schneemann Papers on Up to and Including Her Limits, 1974-2002
Carolee Schneemann Papers on Up to and Including Her Limits were received by MoMA in conjunction with an acquisition by the Museum of Carolee Schneemann's installation Up to and Including Her Limits (1973-1976), meant to memorialize the original performances.

Archives and Special Collections at Rutgers University
Archives and Special Collections at Rutgers contains finding aids for six archival repositories at Rutgers University.

The Heresies Collective, inc. Records
The Heresies Collective was a group of New York-based artists, academics, writers, and critics who published the influential feminist journal Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics from 1977 to 1993. The collection contains meeting minutes, financial and business records, original artwork, manuscripts, photographs, press and publicity materials, and materials documenting Heresies' editorial and publishing processes. Founding members included Patsy Beckert, Joan Braderman, Mary Beth Edelson, Harmony Hammond, Elizabeth Hess, Joyce Kozloff, Arlene Ladden, Lucy Lippard, Mary Miss, Marty Pottenger, Miriam Schapiro, Joan Snyder, Elke Solomon, Pat Steir, May Stevens, Michelle Stuart, Susana Torre, Elizabeth Weatherford, Sally Webster, and Nina Yankowitz.

Gloria Orenstein Collection on Women Artists
The collection comprises oral history interviews conducted by students of the feminist historian Gloria Orenstein between 2006 and 2012. Of special interest are additional materials provided by the interviewee Anne Gauldin, documenting the feminist performance groups The Waitresses and Sisters of Survival, which were active in the 1970s and 1980s.

Faith Ringgold Collection
The Faith Ringgold Collection reflects many aspects of its creator's experiences as a teacher, artist, consultant, and curator.

The Miriam Schapiro Papers
Miriam Schapiro (1923-2015) was a feminist artist, educator, and collector. She is known as one of the mothers of 1970s feminist art. In addition to creating artwork celebrating women artists, she was a founding member of the Heresies Collective, New York Feminist Art Institute, and brought the Feminist Art Program to the California Institute of the Arts with Judy Chicago.

New York Feminist Art Institute records
The New York Feminist Art Institute (NYFAI) was founded in New York City in 1979. It was established by a group of women artists, educators, and administrators: Nancy Azara, Lucille Lessane, Miriam Schapiro, Carol Stronghilos, Irene Peslikis, and Selena Whitefeather. NYFAI had its roots in the women's movement of the early 1970s. The founders of NYFAI sought to bring women of diverse experiences and backgrounds together to form a supportive community in which to create art.

Women’s Caucus for Art Records
The Women's Caucus for Art (WCA) is a national organization of over 3,500 women in the visual arts professions founded in 1972.

Various Resources on Feminist Art and the Second-Wave Feminist Movement

Barnard Archives and Special Collections

Second-wave feminism holdings
Includes the Barnard Center for Research on Women Feminist Ephemera Collection; Barnard Center for Research on Women Historical Periodicals Collection; and various collections related to the second-wave feminist movement.

Sabra Moore NYC Women’s Art Movement Collection
This collection documents Sabra Moore’s involvement in the Women’s Art Movement, Women’s Caucus for Art, Women Artists in Revolution, Heresies Collective, and other feminist artist groups based in New York City from the 1970s to the mid-1990s.

Independent Voices Collection, JSTOR
Over 75 magazines, newsletters, and newspapers created by activists and collectives that helped propel the second wave of feminism from the late sixties and early seventies through the end of the 20th century. Groups represented by these publications include the Redstockings, New York Radical Women, Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, the Third World Women’s Alliance, and many others. Abortion, rape, unequal pay, women in the service, childcare, women’s self-help, pornography, gender roles, and many other major issues of the period were extensively covered in the pages of the feminist press.

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 Expanded Digital Archive
Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 presented the work of 120 women artists and collectives active in Latin America and the United States during a key period in Latin American history and the development of contemporary art. The artists represent fifteen countries and include emblematic figures such as Lygia Clark, Ana Mendieta, and Marta Minujín as well as lesser-known contemporaries such as the Cuban-born abstract artist Zilia Sánchez, the Colombian sculptor Feliza Bursztyn, and the Brazilian video artist Letícia Parente. The exhibition is the first survey of radical and feminist art practices in Latin America and among Latina artists in the United States. The exhibition, curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Andrea Giunta with Marcela Guerrero, was on view at the Hammer Museum from September-December 2017 as part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, an initiative of the Getty with arts institutions across Southern California. It traveled to the Brooklyn Museum and the Pinacoteca de São Paulo.

Smith College Special Collections

Sophia Smith Collection of Women's History
Founded in 1942, the Sophia Smith Collection (SSC) is one of the most significant collections of women’s history in the United States that focuses on women working on behalf of other women and gender minorities. The SSC has substantive strengths in women’s reproductive rights and justice, women’s liberation movements, suffrage and civil rights, community activism, iconoclast creators, women’s economic justice, lesbian and queer communities, and women’s environmental justice. It is a collection that reflects the diversity and complexity of women’s lives and identities through the lens of social, political, and cultural change, and gender justice.

Voices of Feminism Oral History Project
The Voices of Feminism Archival Development Project, funded by the Ford Foundation from 2002 to 2008, aimed to bring race, class, and sexual diversity to the holdings of the Sophia Smith Collection.

Stanford University Special Collections

!Women Art Revolution
Video interviews with over 40 women artists, critics, historians, and curators by Lynn Hershman-Leeson for the film !Women Art Revolution, documenting the development of the feminist art movement from the 1970s through 2008.