Moira Roth

{{Short description|English feminist art historian (1933–2021)}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

{{Use American English|date=March 2021}}

{{Infobox writer

| name = Moira Roth

| image = MoiraRothPassportPhoto1970.jpg

| caption = Roth in 1970

| birth_date = July 24, 1933

| birth_place = London, England

| death_date = {{death date and age|2021|6|14|1933|07|24}}

| death_place = Berkeley, California, United States

| education = London School of Economics
New York University
University of California, Berkeley

| genre = Contemporary art
feminist art

| awards = Women's Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award, 1997
College Arts Association's National Recognition in the Arts Award, 2006

| years_active = 1968–2021

| website = {{url |moiraroth.net}}

| birth_name = Moira Shannon

}}

Moira Roth (née Moira Shannon; 1933–2021) was an English-born American art historian, feminist art critic, and educator.

Early life and education

File:Women Art Revolution.jpg]]

She was born as Moira Shannon on July 24, 1933, in London,{{Cite web |last=Jones |first=Amelia |date=2021-06-29 |title=Remembering Moira Roth 'a truly maverick feminist art historian' |url=https://forarthistory.org.uk/moira-roth/ |access-date=2024-05-11 |website=For Art History, Association for Art History UK |language=en-GB}} and raised in Cornwall, England. Her mother was Eve Shannon was a Canadian immigrant, who hosted Jewish refugees in London. When she was 17 years old she moved from England to Washington, D.C., to live with her Irish father who worked for the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

She was educated at the London School of Economics in England, and received a B.A. degree in sociology; an M.A. degree from New York University; and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1974.{{cite web|title=Moira Roth|url=https://inside.mills.edu/academics/faculty/arth/mroth/mroth_cv.php|website=Mills College|access-date=27 December 2016}}

Career

She was a Trefethen Professor of Art History at Mills College in Oakland, California from 1985 to 2017. She taught at the University of California, San Diego from 1974 to 1985.{{Cite web |date=June 25, 2021 |title=Moira Roth (1933–2021) |url=https://www.artforum.com/news/moira-roth-1933-2021-86151 |access-date=2021-06-25 |website=Artforum |language=en-US |issn=0004-3532}}

She editing The Amazing Decade: Women and Performance Art in America 1970-1980, A Source Book, published by Astro Artz (1983). Her collection of essays, Difference/Indifference: Musings on Postmodernism, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, was published, with a commentary by Jonathan D. Katz, by Psychology Press (1998), exploring the construction of masculinity and conflicting identities.

She appears in Lynn Hershman Leeson's 2010 documentary film !Women Art Revolution.{{Cite web |author=Anon |year=2018 |title=Artist, Curator & Critic Interviews |url=https://exhibits.stanford.edu/women-art-revolution/feature/artist-curator-critic-interviews |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180326230847/https://exhibits.stanford.edu/women-art-revolution/feature/artist-curator-critic-interviews |archive-date=March 26, 2018 |access-date=Aug 23, 2018 |work=!Women Art Revolution - Spotlight at Stanford |language=en |df=mdy-all}} Roth was interviewed for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art Elizabeth Murray Oral History project.{{Cite web |last=Katz |first=Jonathan D. |date=2021-06-29 |title=In Memory of Moira Roth |url=https://www.collegeart.org/news/2021/06/29/in-memory-of-moira-roth/ |access-date=2024-05-11 |website=CAA News, College Art Association |language=en}}

Death

Roth died at the age of 87 on June 14, 2021, in Berkeley, California.

Awards and honors

She received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women's Caucus for Art in 1997, and the National Recognition in the Arts Award from the College Art Association in 2006.{{cite web|title=MILLS COLLEGE PROFESSOR MOIRA ROTH RECEIVES NATIONAL ARTS AWARD|url=https://www.mills.edu/academics/faculty/arth/mroth/mroth.php|website=Mills College Newsroom|publisher=Mills College|access-date=27 December 2016}}{{cite web|title=2006 CWA Annual Recognition Awards|url=http://www.collegeart.org/awards/cwa2006|publisher=College Arts Association|access-date=27 December 2016}}

Publications

=Books=

  • Roth authored and edited numerous books, including writing the introduction and texts (together with commentary by Jonathan D. Katz), Difference/Indifference: Musings on Postmodernism, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, 1998 in Critical Voices in Art, Theory and Culture Series, Amsterdam, Holland: Gordon and Breach Publishing Group, 1998{{cite book|last1=Roth|first1=Moira|last2=Katz|first2=Jonathan D.|title=Difference / Indifference: Musings on Postmodernism, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage|date=2014|publisher=Rutledge|location=London|isbn=9781135221843|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P9FQAwAAQBAJ&q=Difference%2FIndifference%3A+Musings+on+Postmodernism%2C+Marcel+Duchamp+and+John+Cage%2C+1998.+In+Critical+Voices+in+Art%2C+Theory+and+Culture+Series%2C+Amsterdam%2C+Holland%3A+Gordon+and+Breach+Publishing+Group%2C+1998&pg=PR4|access-date=27 December 2016}}
  • She edited the following books, Rachel Rosenthal, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1997{{cite journal |last1=Balcalzo |first1=Dan |date=1999 |title=Book Reviews |journal=Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory |volume=10 |issue=1–2 |pages=291–313 |doi=10.1080/07407709908571307 |hdl-access=free |hdl=10468/10396}} and Abraham's Daughter: The Life and Times of Rose Hacker, London: Deptford Forum Publishing Ltd., 1996
  • She edited and wrote the introduction for, We Flew Over the Bridge; the Memoirs of Faith Ringgold, Little Brown, November 1995 (reprinted in 2005, Duke University Press){{cite web|title=Moira Roth Talks About Faith Ringgold: Friend, Fellow Traveler, and Colleague|url=http://www.sonomacounty.com/sonoma-events/moira-roth-talks-about-faith-ringgold-friend-fellow-traveler-and-colleague|publisher=Art Museum of Sonoma County|access-date=27 December 2016}} and edited and contributed to Connecting Conversations: Interviews with 28 Bay Area Women Artists, Eucalyptus Press, Mills College, 1988{{cite web|last1=Roth|first1=Moira|title=Connecting Conversations: Interviews with 28 Bay Area Women Artists|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vCVKAQAAIAAJ|website=Google Books|publisher=Eucalyptus Press, Mills College|access-date=27 December 2016|year=1988}} and The Amazing Decade: Women and Performance Art in America 1970-1980, A Source Book, Los Angeles: Astro Artz, 1983.{{cite book|last1=Roth|first1=Moira|title=The amazing decade: women and performance art in America, 1970-1980 : women and performance art in America 1970-1980|oclc=709813425}}

=Articles=

  • “Interview with Suzanne Lacy” (abridged by Laura Meyers from the unpublished 1990 interview by Roth with Lacy, Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Washington DC), Entering the Picture: Judy Chicago, the Fresno Feminist Art Program, and the Collective Visions of Women Artists (ed. Jill Fields), New York: Routledge, 2012
  • “Villa’s Word in Collision: A Study in Four Part, 1976-2007,” Carlos Villa and the Integrity of Spaces (ed. Theodore S. Gonzalez), San Francisco: Meritage Press, 2011
  • Introduction, “Martha Wilson: A Woman With a Mind of Her Own,” Martha Wilson Sourcebook: 40 Years of Reconsidering Performance, Feminism, Alternative Spaces (ed. Martha Wilson), New York: Independent Curators International, 2011
  • “Suzanne Lacy: Three Decades of Performing and Writing/Writing and Performing,” in Leaving Art: Suzanne Lacy's Writings on Performance, Politics and Publics, Durham, North Carolina and London: Duke University Press, 2010, pp.xvii-x1i
  • “Allan Kaprow’s Tree, a Happening,” Archives of American Art Journal, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC., Spring 2008
  • “Women’s Rights and History, 1910-2008,” in Ginger Wolfe-Suarez: As Long As I live You Will Live, Mills College Art Museum Catalog, 2008 (5 pages)
  • “An Interview with John Baldessari (1973),” edited by Naomi Sawelson-Gorse, X-tra, vol. 8, no. 2, 2005, pp. 14–35
  • “An Interview with John Cage (1971),” edited by Naomi Sawelson-Gorse, in Etant donné, Paris, No. 6, Fall 2005 (bilingual issue on John Cage and Marcel Duchamp), pp. 136–161
  • "Faith Ringgold: Putting Jones Road on the Map," Nka, Journal of Contemporary African Art, #13/14, Spring/Summer 2001. [Part 7 of Traveling Companions/ Fractured Worlds]
  • “Suzanne Lacy, Between Aesthetics and Politics” (and an interview), Flintridge Foundation Awards for Visual Artists, 1991–2000, edited by Noriko Gambin and Karen Jacobson, Pasadena: Flintridge Foundation, 2000
  • "Of Self and History: Exchanges with Linda Nochlin" Art Journal, Fall 2000, reprinted in Aruna d'Souza, ed., Of Self and History, In Honor of Linda Nochlin, Thames and Hudson 2001. [Part 5 of Traveling Companions/Fractured Worlds]
  • "The Aesthetic of Indifference," Artforum, November, 1977. Reprinted (with postscript) in And (English publication), Fall 1990. Reprinted in Dancing Around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg, and Duchamp, edited by Carlos Basualdo and Erica F. Battle, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2012.

Filmography

References

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