Arlene Raven

{{Infobox person

|name =Arlene Raven

|image =Arlene_Raven_(1982).jpeg

|alt =

|caption =

|birth_name =Arlene Rubin

|birth_date =July 12, 1944

|birth_place =Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.

|death_date ={{Death-date and age|August 1, 2006|July 12, 1944}}

|death_place =Brooklyn, New York, U.S.

|nationality =

|alma_mater = George Washington University; Johns Hopkins University

|other_names =

|occupation =Art historian, art critic, curator, and writer

|years_active =1972–2006{{cite web|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-aug-13-me-raven13-story.html|title=Arlene Raven, 62; Established L.A. Center to Support Female Artists|first=Elaine|last=Woo|date=August 13, 2006|publisher=|access-date=December 4, 2018|via=LA Times}}

|notable_works=Established the Los Angeles Woman's Building

}}

Arlene Raven (Arlene Rubin: July 12, 1944, Baltimore, Maryland – August 1, 2006, Brooklyn, New York) was a feminist art historian, author, critic, educator, and curator. Raven was a co-founder of numerous feminist art organizations in Los Angeles in the 1970s.

Life and work

Arlene Raven's parents were Joseph and Annette Rubin, middle-class Jewish-American parents, in Baltimore, Maryland.[http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/baltimoresun/obituary.aspx?pid=172164204 "Joseph Rubin Obituary"], Baltimore Sun, August 20, 2014, via Legacy.com. Note that Joseph Rubin's obituary lists Arlene as a decedent family member, but spells the last name "Ravan". Her father was a bar owner, and her mother a homemaker.

Raven earned an Artium Baccalaureatus from Hood College in Maryland in 1965, then went on to complete graduate study.{{cite web|last=Woo|first=Elaine|title=Arlene Raven, 62; Established L.A. Center to Support Female Artists|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-aug-13-me-raven13-story.html|work=Los Angeles Times|date=August 13, 2006|access-date=November 1, 2011}} She earned an MFA in painting from George Washington University and completed a PhD in art history from Johns Hopkins University in 1975.

Raven was a major figure in the Feminist Art Movement and was part of an effort to educate women artists and provide them with opportunities to make and show work that was specifically about their experiences as women.{{cite journal|last=Arlene Raven|author2=Judy Chicago|author3=Sheila de Bretteville|title=The Feminist Studio Workshop|journal=Womanspace|date=April–May 1973|volume=1|page=17}} In 1973, Raven co-founded the Feminist Studio Workshop with Judy Chicago and Sheila Levrant de Bretteville.{{cite web|title=The Woman's Building|url=http://womansbuilding.org/timeline.htm|work=Timeline|access-date=November 1, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111125014956/http://www.womansbuilding.org/timeline.htm|archive-date=November 25, 2011|url-status=dead|df=mdy-all}} The goal of the Feminist Studio Workshop, an independent art school ultimately housed in the Los Angeles Woman's Building, was to "come together as a community of working individuals whose work grows out of our shared experiences as women and our shared social context," and an emphasis was put on "cooperation, collaboration, and sisterhood." That same year, Raven co-founded The Center for Feminist Art Historical Studies with fellow Johns Hopkins-educated art historian Ruth Iskin.{{cite book|last=Wilding|first=Faith|title=By Our Own Hands|year=1977|publisher=Double X|location=Santa Monica, CA|page=93}} The center was dedicated to serious research on women artists, developing a feminist art historical methodology, and creating a slide archive of work by women. Raven also co-founded and edited the women's culture magazine Chrysalis.{{cite web|last=Chicago |first=Judy |title=Arlene Raven Feminist Art Activist 1944 – 2006 |url=http://jwa.org/weremember/raven |work=We Remember |access-date=November 1, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110922120916/http://jwa.org/weremember/raven |archive-date=September 22, 2011 }} In 1976, she was a founding member of The Lesbian Art Project; she herself was a lesbian as well.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sNCJAwAAQBAJ&q=arlene+raven+lesbian&pg=PA31 |title=The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts - Claude J. Summers - Google Books |access-date=2018-12-04|isbn=9781573441919 |last1=Summers |first1=Claude J. |year=2004 |publisher=Cleis Press }} Members explored lesbianism through artwork, researched lesbian artists of the past, such as the painter Romaine Brooks, and questioned the cultural meaning of the very term "lesbian."{{cite book|title=From Site to Vision: The Woman's Building in Contemporary Culture|year=2011|publisher=OTIS College of Art and Design|location=Los Angeles, CA|page=354|first=Terry |last=Wolverton|chapter=Lesbian Art : A Partial Inventory|editor-first=Sondra |editor-last=Hale |editor2= Terry Wolverton}} She was also a founder of the Women’s Caucus for Art.{{cite web|title=Biography: Arlene Raven|url=http://www.cla.purdue.edu/waaw/corinne/Raven.htm|work=Lesbian Photography on the West Coast, 1972–1977|publisher=Women Artists of the American West|access-date=November 1, 2011|archive-date=September 28, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110928093023/http://www.cla.purdue.edu/waaw/corinne/Raven.htm|url-status=dead}}

In addition to the Feminist Studio Workshop, Raven also taught at the California Institute of the Arts, Maryland Institute College of Art, Parsons The New School for Design, UCLA, University of Southern California and The New School for Social Research. In the 1980s she became the chief art critic for the Village Voice.

She curated ten exhibitions, including ones for the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Long Beach Museum of Art. One notable exhibition was "At Home," "which brought together many of the artists and ideas she had championed for the previous decade."{{cite journal |last1=Lovelace |first1=Carey |title=Bringing It All Back Home |journal=Artforum International |date=Nov 2006 |volume=45 |issue=3 |pages=61–62 |id={{ProQuest|214349890}} }}

In 2000, Raven became critic-in-residence at the Rinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art. In 2002, she received the Frank Jewett Mather Award for art criticism from the College Art Association.{{cite web|url=http://www.collegeart.org/awards/matherpast|title=Awards|publisher=The College Art Association|access-date=October 11, 2010}}

Raven died of cancer at her home in Brooklyn, New York, on August 1, 2006, aged 62. She was survived by her father, her sister Phyllis [Gelman], and Nancy Grossman, her life partner of 23 years.

Books

Raven authored nine books, including:

Feminist Art Criticism: An Anthology (1988) (and editor) OCLC 581561464 {{ISBN|0835718786}}
Crossing Over: Feminism and Art of Social Concern (1988) OCLC 901903194 {{ISBN|0835720179}}
Art in the Public Interest (1989) OCLC 502660046 {{ISBN|0306805391}}
New feminist criticism : art, identity, action (1994) OCLC 27816089 {{ISBN|0064309096}}

Monographs:

Nancy Grossman (1991)
June Wayne: Tunnel of the Senses (1997)

References

External links

[http://www.cla.purdue.edu/waaw/corinne/Raven.htm Biography] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110928093023/http://www.cla.purdue.edu/waaw/corinne/Raven.htm |date=September 28, 2011 }}

Category:1944 births

Category:2006 deaths

Category:20th-century American essayists

Category:20th-century American women writers

Category:American art critics

Category:American art curators

Category:American art historians

Category:American book editors

Category:American feminist writers

Category:American lesbian artists

Category:American lesbian writers

Category:American women critics