A candid and generous color-illustrated account of women artists creating politically and personally effective art works, exhibitions, and actions over two tumultuous decades This abundantly illustrated personal narrative takes readers through twenty-two years of activism in the women's art movements in New York City during a period of great cultural change. Author Sabra Moore vividly recounts life in this era of social upheaval in which women artists responded to war, racial tension and reconciliation, cultural and aesthetic inequality, and struggles for reproductive freedom. We learn intimately how she and fellow women artists found ways to create politically and personally effective art works, exhibitions, actions, and institutions. The book features Moore's involvement in pivotal art organizations of this time and her own development as an artist, counterbalanced with her connections to family in rural East Texas and friends in New Mexico. Moore was a member of the Heresies Collective, an influential feminist activist group, became editor of their art and politics journal Heresies, and was president of the NYC/Women's Caucus for Art. She helped coordinate and curate many of the earliest large-scale exhibitions of women artists in NYC, including Views by Women Artists (1982), and the collaborative shows Reconstruction Project and Connections Project/Conexus. Moore was a principle organizer of the 1984 demonstration against MoMA over their lack of inclusion of women artists and was a member of various groundbreaking collaborative arts groups in the 1970s, including Atlantic Gallery and WAR (Women Artists in Revolution). While Openings is an historical narrative of women artists' actions, organizations, and ideas, it also candidly describes their periods of challenge, including the death of sculptor Ana Mendieta and the indictment of her husband and the author's own attempted murder by her former art teacher. The book is illustrated throughout by a treasure of 950 color and black & white images of the art from this momentous period: a valuable collection that is concurrently being archived by Barnard College along with papers, letters, show cards, posters, original artworks, and other documents. This eye-opening book includes forewords by renowned art critic Lucy Lippard and poet/activist Margaret Randall.
Sabra Moore is an artist, writer, and activist. After moving to New York City in 1966, she became an integral creative force within the feminist art movement. Lucy Lippard is an internationally known writer, activist, and curator. She has authored twenty-two books, has curated more than fifty major exhibitions, and holds nine honorary degrees. Lippard is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts grants. Margaret Randall is a feminist poet with a long history of social activism (in Mexico, Cuba, and Nicaragua, as well as the United States). More than 150 published books reflect her personal experience and generational struggles. She has also translated much poetry by others. In Mexico, she co-founded El Corno Emplumado, a bilingual journal that published more than 700 writers from 35 countries. Returning to the US in 1984, the government ordered her deported, claiming her writing subversive. She won her case in 1989. Among her recent awards are the Poet of Two Hemisphere Prize (Quito, Ecuador 2019) and the 2020 George Garrett Award given by AWP. http://www.margaretrandall.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Randall
-[Openings is] crucial to the understanding of women artists in New York . . . it really captures what it must have been like to be an artist in New York in the 70s and 80s.- --Patricia Hills, Art historian and Professor Emerita, Boston University -This is important reading for aspiring women artists today, and evidence that the received history of the feminist movement . . . is not always the full picture.- --Suzanne Lacy, Chair, MFA in Public Practice, Otis College of Art and Design -Moore's memoir is radical not only because it frames feminist art history as central, but also in its very telling, where monumental events in the art world stand equal to Moore's personal life, her dreams, and her poetic tenderness.---Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, playwright, creator of My Little Red Book, and co-editor of The Feminist Utopia Project -Openings puts you right there--at the heart of the passion, brilliance, and creative chaos of the feminist art uprising . . . an intimate and soulful glimpse into a critical epoch. --Chellis Glendinning, psychologist and author of My Name is Chellis and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization -Sabra Moore's Openings: A Memoir from the Women's Art Movement, New York City, 1970-1992 contains many different moods as well as different moments in time and location, oscillating in tone from the highly personal and poignant to the public and political, while they collectively evoke deeply complex and vivid pictures of the shifting situations, and stances of women artists (including Moore, herself) in New York City over the course of twenty years.These fascinating memoirs, accompanied by some 900 images, are drawn from Sabra Moore's amazing journals (divided into twelve chapters, beginning with -Where I/We Came In- and ending with -A Bird in the Hand-) that she kept while she lived as a central figure in New York's feminist circles.- --Moira Roth, Art critic and Professor of Art History, Mills College -Sabra Moore has created a generous and wonderfully readable account of the large community of women artists working in New York in these two vital decades of struggles and achievements. Their shared lives blend in this memoir, denying the notion that only a few of these women's lives mattered then and now. Her writing is lucid, her stories funny, poignant, and inspiring. This book should be required reading by all historians of this phase of the growing importance of women's contributions to the visual arts in 20th century America.- --Ann Sutherland Harris, Professor Emerita, History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh --### "[Openings is] crucial to the understanding of women artists in New York . . . it really captures what it must have been like to be an artist in New York in the 70s and 80s." --Patricia Hills, Art historian and Professor Emerita, Boston University "This is important reading for aspiring women artists today, and evidence that the received history of the feminist movement . . . is not always the full picture." --Suzanne Lacy, Chair, MFA in Public Practice, Otis College of Art and Design "Moore's memoir is radical not only because it frames feminist art history as central, but also in its very telling, where monumental events in the art world stand equal to Moore's personal life, her dreams, and her poetic tenderness."--Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, playwright, creator of My Little Red Book, and co-editor of The Feminist Utopia Project "Openings puts you right there--at the heart of the passion, brilliance, and creative chaos of the feminist art uprising . . . an intimate and soulful glimpse into a critical epoch. --Chellis Glendinning, psychologist and author of My Name is Chellis and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization "Sabra Moore's Openings: A Memoir from the Women's Art Movement, New York City, 1970-1992 contains many different moods as well as different moments in time and location, oscillating in tone from the highly personal and poignant to the public and political, while they collectively evoke deeply complex and vivid pictures of the shifting situations, and stances of women artists (including Moore, herself) in New York City over the course of twenty years.These fascinating memoirs, accompanied by some 900 images, are drawn from Sabra Moore's amazing journals (divided into twelve chapters, beginning with "Where I/We Came In" and ending with "A Bird in the Hand") that she kept while she lived as a central figure in New York's feminist circles." --Moira Roth, Art critic and Professor of Art History, Mills College "Sabra Moore has created a generous and wonderfully readable account of the large community of women artists working in New York in these two vital decades of struggles and achievements. Their shared lives blend in this memoir, denying the notion that only a few of these women's lives mattered then and now. Her writing is lucid, her stories funny, poignant, and inspiring. This book should be required reading by all historians of this phase of the growing importance of women's contributions to the visual arts in 20th century America." --Ann Sutherland Harris, Professor Emerita, History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh --###
