Explore the Era

Delve into the postwar Los Angeles art world in this online archive, which provides additional material related to the exhibitions on view at the Getty Center. Learn about hipsters and happenings, and the venues across the city where all the action took place through images from the archives and first-hand accounts with the artists.

Miriam Schapiro
Artist

Miriam Schapiro in the studio, 1980. Courtesy Flomenhaft Gallery

Miriam Schapiro was born in Toronto in 1923 and received her BA, MA, and MFA from the State University of Iowa. She moved to New York at the beginning of the 1950s, and befriended abstract expressionists such as Helen Frankenthaler and Joan Mitchell. By the mid-1960s, she developed the hard-edge paintings that are among her best-known work. Schapiro moved to Southern California in 1967 and became a professor at CalArts in 1970, where she established the Feminist Art Program with Judy Chicago. While at CalArts (1970-1974) Schapiro developed her first “femmages,” a form of collage that spoke to women’s experiences.

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Explore the Archive

  • Video: The Womanhouse Kitchen

    Video: Experience the Womanhouse Kitchen. Excerpt from the documentary film Womanhouse, 1974, directed by Johanna Demetrakas. The Getty Research Institute, 2896-034. © Johanna Demetrakas

  • Womanhouse catalogue

    Womanhouse catalogue, Feminist Art Program at CalArts, 1972. Designed by Sheila Levrant de Bretteville. The Getty Research Institute, 89-B23677. Courtesy of CalArts Archives

  • Womanhouse announcement

    Womanhouse announcement, 1972. The Getty Research Institute, Gift of Rolf G. Nelson, 2010.M.38.6. Courtesy of Sheila Levrant de Bretteville

  • Womanhouse installation in Los Angeles

    Womanhouse installation in Los Angeles, featuring Robin Weltsch’s Kitchen and Vicki Hodgetts’s Eggs to Breasts (Sponsored by Feminist Art Program at CalArts), 1972. The Getty Research Institute, 2000.M.43.1. Photo courtesy Lloyd Hamrol