Our Mission
Engage. Reflect. Act.
Working collectively, various art museums and non-profit institutions from across the United States will present a series of concurrent events—including commissions, exhibitions, performances, talks, and symposia—over the course of one year, beginning in the fall of 2020, during the run-up to the next presidential election. This strategic endeavor takes feminist thought and practice as its point of departure and considers art as a catalyst for discourse and civic engagement.
Motivated by the ethical imperative to effect change and promote equality within our institutions and beyond, these collective projects will advocate for inclusive and equitable access to social, cultural, and economic resources for people of all genders, sexualities, races, ethnicities, classes, ages, and abilities. This cooperative effort stages a range of projects that together generate a cultural space for engagement, reflection, and action, while recognizing the constellation of differences and multiplicity among feminisms.
The Feminist Art Coalition (FAC) was conceived by Apsara DiQuinzio in early 2017 in response to the 2016 presidential election and was inspired by the Women’s March that took place worldwide on January 21, 2017, a day after the U.S. presidential inauguration. DiQuinzio reached out to colleagues in the field who then began informally meeting to conceptualize a nationwide collective initiative that would highlight feminist practices in the arts.
This later crystallized into a working group that developed the mission of FAC in spring 2018 when the curators convened in Berkeley, facilitated by a grant from the Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Vic Brooks, Johanna Burton, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Lauren Cornell, Adrienne Edwards, Anne Ellegood, Rita Gonzalez, Henriette Huldisch, Eungie Joo, Tina Kukielski, Kim Nguyen, Solveig Øvstebø, Lucía Sanromán, and Claudia Schmuckli were members of the working group.
The administration of FAC is largely organized by a steering committee that consists of Vic Brooks, Aldeide Delgado, Apsara DiQuinzio, Anne Ellegood, Rita Gonzalez, and Henriette Huldisch. At various points curatorial support for the project has included Val Moon, Lucia Olubunmi Momoh, Claire Frost, and Shaelyn Hanes.
Alongside the steering committee, all FAC participants are encouraged to self-organize working groups around issues they consider urgent, and each project is organized by the originating institution. This grassroots initiative strives to maintain a nonhierarchical working model that questions and seeks to overcome colonial and patriarchal narratives within institutional spaces.