13 Women Artists

Alice Adams, Louise Bourgeois, Loretta Dunkelman, Audrey Hemenway, Helene Hui, Pat Lasch, Ann Marshall, Mary Miss, Kazuko Miyamoto, Patsy Norvell, Joyce Robins, Paula Tavins, Judy Waterman Zürcher Gallery is pleased to present 13 Women Artists, a re-staging of the eponymous exhibition that originally took place at 117-119 Prince Street, New York (March 4–31, 1972). “To mount an exhibition of high professional quality without a patron, without a museum, without a gallery director, without a spokesman – to do it themselves, and do it well – this is the intention of the thirteen women whose work can be seen at 117 Prince Street during March.”[1] For many years, I have wanted to restage the 13 Women Artists exhibit, which took place at 117-119 Prince Street in New York (March 4–31, 1972). Kazuko Miyamoto had shown me the poster, and it became a magnet for me. When I started to show and represent Alice Adams’ work, I thought of the poster again, and I felt I was ready to restage that exhibition, and that I should do it without waiting, otherwise someone else would steal this great idea. I took on the role of a detective trying to find the works shown in the original exhibit (some of which are included in our restaging) or works that are either from the same period or stylistically close. The nucleus of the original show was Ann Marshall and Joyce Robins, who gradually brought all of the artists together. About half of them were members of the Women’s Ad Hoc Committee.2 Joyce Robins contacted Louise Bourgeois, and Ann Marshall says that Bourgeois was very enthusiastic about being included. Lawrence Alloway recalls that the artists themselves rented the space for $650. It was the result of a spontaneous initiative and a collective action, an all-women show. Ann Marshall was the youngest, 25 years old; Alice Adams and Audrey Hemenway were 42 years old; and Louise Bourgeois, born in 1911, was 60 years old. The others were in their late twenties or early thirties. Except for Louise Bourgeois, who had shown sporadically since 1945, none of the artists in this exhibition were affiliated with any commercial gallery, and a few had never been shown before 13 Women Artists. The exhibit preceded A.I.R. Gallery, which opened later that year on September 17, 1972, at 97 Wooster St in New York, and included two of the 13 artists, Loretta Dunkelman and Patsy Norvell, as their early members. It’s important to consider the 13 Women Artists show within the timeframe of the 26 Contemporary Women Artists exhibit curated by Lucy R. Lippard at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut (April 18–June 13, 1971), which featured Audrey Hemenway, Mary Miss and Paula Tavins, three of the 13 women artists, and the 1973 Biennial Exhibition at the Whitney Museum (January–March 1973) which included four of the 13 women artists: Alice Adams, Louise Bourgeois, Loretta Dunkelman and Mary Miss. Let’s hope the restaging of 13 Women Artists makes the same kind of statement as the original 1972 show in presenting the integrity and strength of these artists’ commitment, and making their voice better heard. “13 Women Artists was the first major exhibition of women artists in New York. The opening was packed and we received reviews in Artforum, Art International, and The Nation (by Lawrence Alloway). The exhibition flyer had even been reproduced in the German newspaper Die Welt. Ultimately, by ignoring the stigma of being labeled as a ‘woman artist,’ the participants of 13 Women Artists were pioneers; we changed attitudes and opened the door for generations of women artists since.” —Loretta Dunkelman, artist “We painted, cleaned up the space and hung our work. Louise wanted the window space, in which she hung from the ceiling a huge latex and plaster sculpture, which resembled a penis. She insisted it had no sexual connotations! We all worked together to decide where each of our works were to be placed. It was a very exciting moment for all of us. I was using thread and muslin as my medium. Patsy was using shelving tape and hair as her medium throughout her early years. Paula Tavins sewed and stuffed soft rectangular shapes into grids. Loretta created beautiful waxy surfaces. Kazuko created string sculptures. Many, but not all, used materials that were uncommon in so-called ‘high art.’ The opening was packed! There was a hunger, and we filled it!” —Pat Lasch, artist Alice Adams (b. 1930, The Bronx, New York) is best known for her land art installations and public projects that she made in the ‘80s and ‘90s for airports, university campuses, and transit systems in the United States. Working in New York City in the 60s, Adams started utilizing her knowledge as a trained weaver and experimenting with new materials sourced from local hardware stores, lumber yards, or salvaged from the streets. In 1966, Lucy R. Lippard showed Alice Adams in Eccentric Abstraction, at the Fischbach Gallery, New York, a show that has since been recorded as a watershed moment in the history of advanced abstract sculpture. Adams’ work is in numerous collections, such as The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY. She has been exhibited in many important group exhibitions including Abstract Erotic: Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, and Alice Adams, The Courtauld, London, 2025; Making Knowing: Craft in Art (1950-2019), The Whitney Museum, NY, 2019-2022; Materializing Six Years: Lucy Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art, The Brooklyn Museum, NY, 2012-2013; and The Whitney Biennial, The Whitney Museum, NY, 1973. Zürcher Gallery has been showing and representing Alice Adams since 2023. Louise Bourgeois (b. 1911, Paris, France - 2010, New York, New York) is one of the most influential artists of the past century. Though she worked in several mediums throughout her 70-year career—including installation, performance, drawing, painting, and printmaking—she is most known as a sculptor. Using the body as a primary form, she explored the full range of the human condition, with a focus on themes of guilt, abandonment, love, and reparation. Bourgeois’ work has been the subject of several major international retrospectives, including those organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Kunstverein, Frankfurt; Tate Modern, London; the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and Haus der Kunst, Munich. Recent exhibitions have been on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan. Loretta Dunkelman (b. 1937, Paterson, New Jersey) has lived and worked on the Bowery in New York since 1967. She earned an MA from Hunter College in 1966, where she studied under Tony Smith and Ad Reinhardt, and a BA in art from Douglass College (Rutgers University) in 1958, studying under Allan Kaprow. A founding member of A.I.R. Gallery, Dunkelman mounted six solo exhibitions with the groundbreak- ing feminist gallery from 1973–1987. Notably, Dunkelman’s early, large-scale works on paper were included in Whitney Biennial 1973: Contemporary American Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York); American Drawings 1963-73 at the Whitney Museum of American Art (NY); Women Choose Women at the New York Cultural Center (NY); and New York Now at the Phoenix Art Museum (Phoenix, AZ). Her work has recently been exhibited at Polina Berlin Gallery, NY (2024-25); Gordon Robichaux Gallery, NY (2025); Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ (2019); and 55 Walker, NY (2018). Audrey Hemenway (b. 1930, New York - 2018) was an American artist, known primarily for her land art and architectural-model-like sculptures that spoke to environmental and ecological themes. Hemenway’s work was include in Twenty-Six Contemporary Women Artists at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum curated by Lucy R. Lippard in 1971. In 2022, her work was shown at the Aldrich Museum as part of 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone, the 51st anniversary show of the 1971 exhibit, which included 26 of the original artists and 26 emerging artists. Hemenway has work in the collection of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and the New Mexico Museum of Art. Helene Hui (b. 1930, Brooklyn, New York - 2018, Ithaca, New York) was shown in group exhibitions at Hong Kong City Hall Gallery, Hong Kong, 1962; Hampton Institute, Hampton, Virginia, 1966; New York Women Artists, University Art Gallery, State University of New York at Albany, New York, 1972; Contemporary Reflections 1973-1974, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut, 1974; A Memorial Show – Works by Helene Hui, gallery onetwentyeight, New York, New York, 2012-2013. Pat Lasch (b. 1944, New York, New York) is a conceptual artist, sculptor and painter. She was an early member of the A.I.R. Gallery, which was founded in 1972. Her work has been shown in many individual and group exhibitions in the US and internationally. Lasch’s work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Academy Museum, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Palm Springs Art Museum, California; and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Recently, Lasch had work in The Currier Museum of Art as part of the exhibition Embellish Me, Works from the Collection of Norma Canelas and William Roth, on view through March 15, 2026. Ann Marshall (b. 1947, Fresno, California) was raised in Los Angeles County. She attended the University of New Mexico and graduated with a BFA in 1969. Afterwards, she moved to Manhattan where she pursued a painting career for 10-11 years until she became employed in sales and sales management. In 1995, Marshall moved to Costa Mesa, California, where she attended a seminary from 1995 to 2001, and focused on biblical Hebrew, Greek and Theology, receiving an MBS in 2001. In addition, she started a handmade jewelry business from 2002 to 2017; after learning silver casting, fabrication and another technique of crocheting of gold and silver wire with beads. Marshall says she is fortunate to have traveled extensively. Now, she also travels to look at and photograph birds, a passion that started in 2020 during Covid, which gave her a chance to study ornithology by Zoom. Her curious nature has led her into study in varied fields such as the sciences, archeology, history and architecture. Mary Miss (b. 1944, New York, New York) has reshaped the boundaries between sculpture, architecture, landscape design, and installation, articulating a vision of engagement for the public sphere. In 2009, Miss founded City as Living Laboratory, creating framework for making issues of sustainability and climate change tangible through the arts. Miss is currently working on two urban scale projects, WaterMarks: an Atlas of Water for the city of Milwaukee and Rescuing Tibbetts Brook One Stitch at a Time, a project to help bring a buried stream to the surface in the Bronx. Her work has been shown at the Guggenheim Museum in 2010, the Sculpture Center in 2008, and the Des Moines Art Center in 1996. Miss has been recognized by numerous awards, including a fellowship from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Urban Land Institute’s Global Award for Excellence and the 2017 Bedrock of New York City Award. Kazuko Miyamoto (b. 1942, Tokyo, Japan) has lived and worked in New York City’s Lower East Side neighborhood since 1964. In 1968, she moved into a studio at 117 Hester Street and met Sol LeWitt, whom she assisted in the execution of his early open cube sculptures and wall drawings. Her innovative String Constructions (1972-1979) deal with the notions of abstraction, architecture, performance, and the ephemeral. Miyamoto’s work is in the collection of SFMoMA, San Francisco, CA; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In 2021, Dr. Barbara Stehle curated Kazuko Miyamoto in Sol LeWitt’s Collection at Zürcher Gallery, New York. Her recent museum solo shows include the Japan Society, NY, 2022; The Madre Museum, Naples, Italy, 2023; Belvedere Museum, Vienna, Austria, 2024; and KW, Berlin, Germany, 2025. Kazuko Miyamoto will be shown in a touring show of Japanese Women Artists After 1945 at the Mudam Museum of Modern Art, Luxembourg, the Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany, the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain (September 25, 2026–March 5, 2028). Zürcher Gallery has been showing and representing Kazuko Miyamoto since 2016. Patsy Norvell (b. 1942, Greenville, South Carolina - 2013, New York, New York) was a NYC-based sculptor, public art and installation artist and among the early artists to settle in SoHo, where she continued to work and live until her passing. Active in the women’s movement since the late 1960s, she participated in consciousness -raising groups, taught Women in the Arts courses at Montclair State College and Hunter College in the 1970s, and became a founding member of A.I.R. Gallery (the first cooperative gallery in the U.S. that exclusively showed women’s work) in 1972. Norvell has work in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art and permanent installations at the Beverley and Cortelyou Road subway stations in Brooklyn, NY. Joyce Robins (b. 1944, Greenville, South Carolina) and raised in the Rockaways in New York, where the beach environment and proximity to the city became formative influences. She received her artistic training at the Yale Summer School of Art and The Cooper Union (BFA, 1966), later earning a BSLA from The City University of New York in 1995. She has had 23 one-person shows of her work. In addition to her sculpture and painting practice, Robins is a landscape designer. Her work is rooted in visual memory and experience, translated through oblique rather than direct reference. Working intuitively and thinking visually, she avoids narrative impulse, allowing her work to emerge organically. Paula Tavins (b. 1939 - d. 2019) received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts before moving to New York. In her work, Tavins often repeated abstract and geometric forms that were softened through her use of fabric, stitching, and painting that deviated into wall-sculptures. In 1971, Tavins was included in Twenty Six Contemporary Women Artists, a show curated by Lucy R. Lippard at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art. Tavins later was shown at the Aldrich for the 51st anniversary show of the 1971 exhibition, which was expanded to include 26 original artists alongside 26 contemporary artists. This exhibition was called 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone. Tavins’ work is in the collection of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the New Mexico Museum of Art and the Sylvia Sleigh Collection of the Rowan University Art Gallery. Judy Waterman (b. 1936, Barrington, Illinois - 2014, Brooklyn, New York) was an American abstract expressionist painter who, beginning in the early 1960s, lived, painted and worked predominantly in New York City. Waterman created unique oil on canvas paintings, watercolors, etchings and oil on paper prints (“drawings”). Her interest in natural surfaces of water, stone, and architecture are reflected in all her artwork. Waterman first studied drawing at the Art Institute of Chicago, and then attended the Art Students League in New York. Waterman’s work was shown in several group exhibitions, including CAPS Grantees from Brooklyn, The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Artists by the Sea, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, NY; Site Work, The World Trade Center, NY; Contemporary Reflections 1973-1974, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CN; and Exhibit with Jean Linder, 55 Mercer, NY. She has work in the collections of the Finch College Museum of Art, NY; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell College, NY; Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, PA; and Staten Island College, NY. 1 - Press Release for 13 Women Artists, February 14, 1972. 2 - Lawrence Alloway, New York Women Artists, University Art Gallery, State University of New York at Albany, October 1–November 5, 1972.