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Miriam Schapiro

decade


1920s

1923

Miriam Schapiro is born in Toronto and grows up in Brooklyn, New York.

decade


1940s

1945

Miriam Schapiro earns her BFA in graphic art from the State University of Iowa, where she studies printmaking under Mauricio Lasansky.

1940s 1946

Miriam Schapiro helps form the Iowa Print Group with Mauricio Lasansky and fellow students.

1946

Miriam Schapiro earns her MA in printmaking from the State University of Iowa.

1946

While in school, Miriam Schapiro meets artist Paul Brach. They marry in 1946.

1949

Miriam Schapiro earns her MFA from the State University of Iowa.

decade


1960s

1963

Miriam Schapiro holds a Tamarind Lithography Workshop fellowship from July through August.

1964

Miriam Schapiro receives a Ford Foundation Grant to hold a lithography workshop at Tamarind in Los Angeles.

1967

Miriam Schapiro and her family move to California after her husband Paul Brach is offered a job as chair of a new art department at the University of California, San Diego. Schapiro is offered a position as lecturer. While at the university, Schapiro meets physicist David Nabilof, with whom she collaborates on computer-aided sketches for her paintings, including the Computer Series.

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decade


1970s

1970

Paul Brach becomes dean of CalArts, and Miriam Schapiro joins their faculty.

1970

Miriam Schapiro meets Judy Chicago and invites her to cofound the Feminist Art Program at CalArts.

1971

Judy Chicago leaves Fresno and accepts a teaching position at the newly formed CalArts. She cofounds the Feminist Art Program at CalArts with Miriam Schapiro, and many of the Fresno students follow her there.

1971

Judy Chicago begins working on Womanhouse with Feminist Art Program participants.

1971

June Wayne invites a group of women to meet in her studio to discuss the hurdles they face and learn practical ways of navigating the business side of the art world. She titles this series of meetings “Business and Professional Problems of Women Artists,” but the class soon renames it “Joan of Art.” Wayne offered these classes for free, and only asks that the women teach their own seminar in return. Under Wayne’s aegis, Miriam Schapiro participates in this series of seminars.

1971

Miriam Schapiro helps form the West-East Bag, a network and support system for women artists.

1971–72 1971

Miriam Schapiro participates in the historic Womanhouse installation with Judy Chicago and 21 other women artists, many of whom are students at the Feminist Art Program. For her contribution, Schapiro and her assistant create The Dollhouse using old liquor crates to create a six-room house featuring a parlor, a kitchen, a movie star’s bedroom, a harem room, a nursery, and an artist’s studio with a male model made of stuffed fabric and a miniature version of Sixteen Windows on an easel.

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1972

Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro host the first West Coast Women Artists’ Conference at CalArts.

1972

In January and February, Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, and 21 other women artists, many from the Feminist Art Program, participate in Womanhouse, a collaborative art installation staged in an abandoned Hollywood mansion.

1972

Miriam Schapiro participates in Dextra Frankel’s all-women exhibition, Invisible/Visible: 21 Artists, at the Long Beach Museum of Art.

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

decade


2000s

2007

Judy Chicago, Mary Kelly, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Senga Nengudi, Miriam Schapiro, and June Wayne are included in the traveling exhibition WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

decade


2010s

In this 2017 video, Judy Chicago explains her dissatisfaction with the male-dominated arts education she received at UCLA and how it inspired her to develop the Feminist Art Program at Fresno State College and the *Womanhouse* project.

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Judy Chicago Lynn Hershman Leeson Mary Kelly Senga Nengudi June Wayne Albuquerque CalArts California Chicago Illinois Iowa Long Beach Long Beach Museum of Art Los Angeles Michigan San Francisco Tamarind UC San Diego Valencia Feminist Art Program Womanhouse

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Stories

Consciousness-Raising and Collaboration

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Judy Chicago Joe Goode Miriam Schapiro Art Institute of Chicago Barney’s Beanery CalArts California Chicago Chouinard Ferus Gallery Fullerton La Cienega Los Angeles Rolf Nelson Gallery SFMOMA UCLA Valencia Western Avenue Feminist Art Program Students Five Womanhouse