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How to remedy this situation? Upend the structure, and invent a new kind of art based on a different definition of "great." And that's what feminists tried to do, though ingrained social values were hard to change. The most visible early feminist artists were white, straight, middle class. Working-class women and women of color belonged to some other world, as did lesbians, Betty Friedan's "lavender menace."

Gradually but always incompletely, boundaries loosened up. In the early '70s, with the Vietnam War in progress, women could see their oppression as part of a larger oppression. At the same time, in different forms, with different priorities, feminism, often assumed to be a Western phenomenon, was developing in truly radical ways in Africa, Asia, South America. There never was a Feminism; there were only feminisms.

How does any show lay out this multitrack panorama? One way to start is by abandoning linear chronology, which is what "Wack!" does, though this doesn't mean it escapes accepted models of history. The presence of figures like Eleanor Antin, Louise Bourgeois, Mary Beth Edelson, Eva Hesse, Mary Kelly, Adrian Piper, Miriam Schapiro, Carolee Schneemann and Hannah Wilke adds up to a pantheon of textbook heroes - a market-ready canon of exactly the kind early feminism tried to disrupt. And certain foundational events are acknowledged. Faith Wilding is represented by a re-creation of the crocheted environment she originally created for the landmark Womanhouse in Los Angeles in 1972. Two of the artists who were with her there, Judy Chicago and Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, are also in the show, with Ms. Chicago's mandalalike paintings representing a genitally centered, "essentialist" brand of feminism that many other artists rejected [see photo].

Here, to the show's credit, they all mingle on equal footing with dozens of less familiar artists, some of them unknown even to seasoned museumgoers. Among then are the Indian-born Nasreen Mohamedi (1937-90) and Zarina Hashmi; Sanja Ivekovic, a conceptual photographer based in Croatia; the social activist Mónica Mayer from Mexico City; the British performance artist Rose English; and the German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger,