ABSTRACT
The Woman’s Building in Los Angeles is a setting for the discovery, creation, and presentation of woman’s culture. This chapter considers the four years of the Woman’s Building’s existence, during which it has generated a wide variety of private and collective enterprises: woman’s art, woman’s words, woman’s music, and woman’s social forms. It deals with the role of the physical environments in which the Woman’s Building has been housed: first in a two-story, unused art school building and then in a three-story warehouse. The chapter describes the process that set up and maintained the women’s environment encompassing the activities, the possibilities for its survival, and its future role. As a public center, the Woman’s Building extends woman’s culture, sharing it with a large constituency. A major strength of the Woman’s Building as an actual environment is its symbol-making function. The Woman’s Building has brought into focus the precarious existence of independent thought and action in daily public life.
