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.

Womanhouse

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

In 1971, Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro established the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). However, CalArts’ new campus was still under construction, so they began by working with the students on Womanhouse, a project through which they collectively transformed a dilapidated Hollywood mansion into a space for installations and performances exploring women’s relation to domestic space. Womanhouse was open for a month in February of 1972. Its profile was greatly raised when it hosted the West Coast Women Artists’ Conference, which hundreds of feminist activists attended.

Historic Map Locations

Works of Art

  • Ablutions performance

    Ablutions performance at Guy Dill’s studio, with Judy Chicago, Suzanne Lacy, Sandra Orgel, and Aviva Rahmani (Sponsored by Feminist Art Program at CalArts), 1972. The Getty Research Institute, Gift of Art in the Public Interest and 18th Street Arts Center, 2006.M.8.42. Photo courtesy Lloyd Hamrol

Explore the Archive

  • 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