ABSTRACT
TH I S C RY O F O U T R A G E at the art establishment’s arrogant male chauvin-ism appeared in 1967 in a slender text published by Solanas herself. 1 Its author went from words to action, shooting Andy Warhol on 3 June 1968. When Solanas fi rst appeared in court, Ti-Grace Atkinson, then New York chapter president of the National Organization of Women (NOW), pronounced her “the fi rst outstanding champion of women’s rights.” 2 Solanas’s protest against male bias in defi nitions of “Great Art” was to resonate with feminists from Atkinson to Judy Chicago, 3 including art historian Linda Nochlin. In an infl uential 1971 essay, Nochlin denounced “the unstated domination of white male subjectivity as one in a series of intellectual distortions which must be corrected in order to achieve a more adequate and accurate view of historical situations.” 4
Historical developments would lead us to believe that since that time, museums, and more generally, the “art world,” would be more receptive to the work of female artists, and in particular to the project of rescuing them from invisibility. While some female artists have fared better, the works of many twentieth-century women remain obscured by their husbands’ fame as artists, and museums collude in this practice. The result is the perpetuation of inaccuracies in the historical record and the loss of valuable art works from our collective history. The story of Josephine Nivison Hopper, wife of Edward Hopper, exemplifi es this trend. Her marginalization began well before the 1960s and continues today, long after the feminist movement attempted to rescue women like her from oblivion. Edward Hopper’s sexism contributed to the erasure of her work, and the Whitney Museum of American Art gave away much of her legacy, which has led to distortions in recent exhibitions and publications.
