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1976

THE WOMAN'S BUILDING: PURPOSE AND GOALS

The Woman's Building is a public center where women's culture -- the individual and collective experience, values, and visions of women -- can be expressed in behalf of all women. It is a place in which women have the opportunity to create concrete alternatives to male suprematist institutions which do not support us in our work. We are committed to housing the pluralism of these feminist alternatives created by women, for we believe it is the synthesis of many visions which will create the future egalitarian world for which all of us strive.

We actively seek the participation of other feminist organizations in the definition and creation of our collective women's culture. Our primary focus is the feminist community and our shared herstory as a source of energy, support and inspiration for all of our activities. We recognize that women's culture is broader than manifestations which are or can be expressed in the Woman's Building alone, and includes the fruits of the labors of all women.

The purpose of the Woman's Building is two-fold:

to educate a wide public audience to women's perceptions, knowledge and herstory through their art

to provide an environment where women can learn from each other the skills, values and visions needed to make their own contributions. 

Our constituency is the feminist audience, the art audience and the general public; it is primarily the first group from which we draw our Feminist Studio Workshop program and extension program students. While in the Feminist Studio workshop we first focused almost exclusively on each woman's growth and work, we now recognize the vital importance of collectivity as a precondition for truly effective individual work. Our essential purpose in feminist education is evolving the community through which each member can act decisively and responsibly in the world. The ultimate aspiration of feminist education is expedite action and creative work which make significant assaults on traditional cultural assumptions in the public sector. 

At the Woman's Building we have broadened our understanding of art to include historical research, public communications, community organizing, administration and "the gentle art of mutual aid," in addition to the traditional forms of visual art, literature, and theater. In our educational community we see all forays into the public sphere made from a responsible feminist perspective as extensions and manifestations of the artistic work of our community. In our feminist context the function of art is to raise consciousness regarding the conditions of women's lives and their aspirations, to invite discussion and criticism in an evolving dialectic towards transforming the existing patriarchial culture. We see feminist art as a specific form of political action in which the expression of our most real self-images can challenge existing societal attitudes toward women, and through which we can share our collective vision of the future which moves us toward a more humane world.