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Changing Houston, Changing Women's Lives:
The Houston Women's Caucus for Art, 1978 - 1988 (Continued)
By MaryRoss Taylor
Later surveys assessed the interests and priorities of the members, but the tone of the surveys shifted, emphasizing services to members rather than political concerns.11
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The political impulse behind the Caucus arose in a national context, but the specific positions the group took were very much the product of the local context. Characteristically for Houston, but probably unusual in other cities, the feminist activists staked out an inclusive territory and attracted support from a number of men. In the 1960s the Houston artist community was small and institutions were minimally engaged with contemporary art. As the 1970s began, only three women artists were regularly visible: Gertrude Barnstone, sculptor Roberta F. Harris, and Dorothy Hood. All joined the Caucus at its founding.12 |
In the mid-1970s, James Surls, George Krause, Gael Stack, John Alexander, Ed Hill and Suzanne Bloom joined the University of Houston art faculty.13
Bloom joined the Caucus in its first year.14
Sculptor Hannah Stewart joined the art department at University of St. Thomas and became a Caucus member. James Harithas, who became director of the Contemporary Art Museum in 1974, featured local artists there, including women, for the first time.15
In 1979, sculptor James Surls launched the influential artist-run exhibition space Lawndale Annex at the University of Houston; Surls and Lawndale joined with the HWCA in a number of programming endeavors.16
By the late 1970s the handful of Houston artists who taught and showed work in the late 1960s and early 1970s found themselves immersed in a "second wave" of artists who arrived or, having lived there, became visible in Houston. Among the "second wave" were numerous women.17
Moreover, the two daily newspapers employed four art critics with feminist sympathies in the 1970s: Ann Holmes, Charlotte Moser,
Moser's successor Donna Tennant at the Houston Chronicle and, at the Houston Post, Mimi Crossley. Crossley was particularly influential in bringing issues raised by the Caucus to wider public attention, with institutional changes as a result.
The newly established Caucus promptly challenged two established mainstream institutions: the local PBS television station and the Chamber of Commerce. The action against PBS reflected the artists' feeling that Houston was a city whose artists got no respect. It was the first of a series of causes that involved the politics of art but transcended gender. Male artists supported the Caucus in those advocacy actions, which increased the chapter's visibility and influence.
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