What is the prospect for women artists in Australia in 2022? Today they are increasingly recognised, honoured, and, most important, emboldened. This was almost inconceivable 50 years ago, in the different world where we first read the celebrated Dorothy Dixer posed by American art historian Linda Nochlin, ‘Why are there no great women artists?’
In 1973, when I first published an article mentioning Vivienne Binns, I could not have predicted her extraordinary career, or her 2022 major museum survey On and through the surface. But the die was cast in the 1970s, with the passionate advocacy and activism of the Women’s Art Movements, and now women are crucial to innovation in the arts, as elsewhere in society. This is no overnight transformation. It’s the culmination of decades of experiment, advocacy,…
