The Women's Caucus for Art (WCA), founded in 1972, is a non-profit organization based in New York City, which supports women artists, art historians, students, educators, and museum professionals. The WCA holds exhibitions and conferences to promote women artists and their works and recognizes the talents of artists through their annual Lifetime Achievement Award. Since 1975 it has been a United Nations-affiliated non-governmental organization (NGO), which has broadened its influence beyond the United States. Within the WCA are several special interest causes including the Women of Color caucus,[1] Eco-Art Caucus, Jewish Women Artist Network, International Caucus and the Young Women's Caucus.[2] The founding of the WCA is seen as a "great stride" in the feminist art movement.
The Women's Caucus for Art membership includes artists, students, educators, art historians, and professionals from museums and galleries. The organization holds conferences, produces exhibitions, conducts research and issues awards.[3]
Along with the founding of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, its creation is seen as one of the "great strides [that] have been made in developing an institutional infrastructure for women's art and art history since the 1970s."[4]
Within the broader feminist movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, a feminist art movement began to contest women's under-representation in professional art organizations, art exhibitions and art history textbooks.[5] The movement "was a major watershed in women's history and the history of art." Its slogan was "the personal is political."[6]
In 1969, Women Artists in Revolution (WAR) formed in response to the inclusion of “only 8 women among the 143 artists shown” at the Whitney Museum’s 1969 Annual. WAR “demanded that the museum change its policies to include more women artists.” In 1971, Linda Nochlin’s "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?"[7] and Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro started the Feminist Art Program at Cal Arts, which provided a new arts education for women based on mentorship, training in tools, research about women artists, consciousness-raising, and role-playing.[8] The following year, "Paula Harper and twenty-one participants in the Feminist Art Program" conceived of "a landmark collaborative installation staged in an empty house in Los Angeles" and called Womanhouse[9]
At its annual conference in San Francisco, women within the College Art Association formed a women's caucus on 28 January 1972, electing Ann Sutherland Harris as the first president (1972-1974).[10] However, tensions developed between this group and the CAA board, and in November 1973 the CAA executive asked "the Women's Caucus, which is not officially affiliated with the CAA, to drop the use of the phrase 'of the CAA' from its name."[11][12]