About this Book

"This foundational catalogue celebrates the accomplishments of women artist graduates of Yale University on the occasion of two major milestones: the 50th anniversary of coeducation at Yale College and the 150th anniversary of the first women students at the University, who came to study at the Yale School of the Fine Arts when it opened in 1869. Beginning with works by female students who received their Certificates of Completion in the 1880s, and including a penetrating portrait by Josephine Miles Lewis-the first student, male or female, to receive a B.F.A. from Yale, in 1891-it weaves together the stories of nearly 80 female artist-alumni, including Eva Hesse, B.F.A. 1959, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, B.F.A. 1961, Jennifer Bartlett, B.F.A. 1964, M.F.A. 1965, Roni Horn, M.F.A. 1978, Maya Lin, B.A. 1981, M.Arch. 1986, An-My Lê, M.F.A. 1993, Wangechi Mutu, M.F.A. 2000, Mickalene Thomas, M.F.A. 2002, Mary Reid Kelley, M.F.A. 2009, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby, M.F.A. 2011. Entries on individual artists are grouped into three chronological sections, and the illustrated works, selected exclusively from the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery, span a variety of media, including paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, photography, and video. Each section opens with an essay that explores a distinct phase of the history of women artists at Yale: their admission to the Yale School of the Fine Arts during its formative Beaux-Arts years; the influx of new generations of female modernists recruited by Josef Albers beginning in 1950; and the increasingly female presence in the visual arts at Yale marked by the coeducation of Yale College in 1969 and the advent of Title IX in 1972-which forced the Yale School of Art to hire full-time female faculty. Amid the rise of feminist movements-from women's suffrage at the turn of the 20th century, to the ERA movement of the mid-20th century, to the #MeToo movement of today, this book asserts the crucial role women have played in pushing creative boundaries at Yale-and in the art world at large"--