In the spring of 2005 seven women–six artists and one curator/art historian–were invited by Melissa Potter to form a women’s critique group in response to the continuing underrepresentation of contemporary women artists in New York galleries and museums. Kate Clark, Marietta Davis, Tiffany Ludwig, Jennifer S. Musawwir, Miriam Schaer and Maria Yoon unanimously responded. What quickly evolved was an intellectual and egalitarian arena for stimulating and focused discussion among peers, with an awareness of the limited exposure for female artists in the New York area–a problem rarely acknowledged by the contemporary art press. The diversity of media, ideas and backgrounds among these seven women lends this group its multifaceted character. This group continues and renews an almost lost tradition of the female/feminist collective as a means of generating dialogues for women in the arts.
This critique group has entered a phase of maturity where it is presenting itself through means of exhibition or publication with the concept of the group as the point of interest and driving force. ART364B, the course number of art historian Linda Nochlin’s first class devoted to the subject of women artists, has been chosen as the name to represent this group of women working to ensure critical spaces of feminist dialogue in the realm of contemporary art.