P.O Box 1498
Canal Street Station
New York, NY 10013
212.634.0007
www.nationalwca.org
10/9/11
For immediate release
PRESS RELEASE
The Women’s Caucus for Art is delighted to announce the 2012 recipients for the Lifetime Achievement Awards:
Whitney Chadwick, Suzanne Lacy, Ferris Olin, Bernice Steinbaum, and Trinh T. Minh-ha. The recipients
for the 2012 President’s Art & Activism Award are Karen Mary Davalos and Cathy Salser.
Lynn Hershman Leeson will receive the WCA Media Award.
The Lifetime Achievements Awards celebration will take place on Saturday, February 25, in Los Angeles, CA.
The celebration will be held during the annual Women’s Caucus for Art and College Art Association conferences.
The awards ceremony, open free of charge to the public, will take place from 6-7:30pm in the Ballroom of the
Kyoto Grand Hotel and Gardens, 120 South Los Angeles St, Los Angeles, CA 90012, followed by a ticketed Gala
from 8-10pm. The WCA ticketed gala event, MOMENTUM, will include a walk-around gourmet dinner with
three food stations, an open bar, the opportunity to meet the awardees, networking, and tours of the museum.
The venue for the Gala is the Japanese American National Museum, 369 East First St, Los Angeles, CA 90012.
Ticket prices include reserved seating at the awards presentation at the Kyoto and the Gala celebration. For more
information or to purchase tickets visit www.nationalwca.org
The Lifetime Achievement Awards were first awarded in 1979 in President Jimmy Carter’s Oval Office to Isabel
Bishop, Selma Burke, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Past honorees have represented the
full range of distinguished achievement in the visual arts professions. This year’s awardees are no exception, with
considerable accomplishment, achievement, and contributions to the visual arts represented by their professional
efforts.
In addition, WCA will be presenting its first Media Award to Lynn Hershman Leeson, and a screening of her
film, !Women Art Revolution on Thursday, February 23, at 7:30pm at the Democracy Center.111 N. Central Ave.,
Los Angeles, CA 90012. (For tickets or more info on this event or other WCA events visit www.nationalwca.org)
The Women's Caucus for Art was founded in 1972 in connection with the College Art Association (CAA). It is a
national member organization unique in its multi-disciplinary, multicultural membership of artists, art historians,
students, educators, and museum professionals. The mission of the Women’s Caucus for Art is to create
community through art, education and social activism. We are committed to recognizing the contribution of
women in the arts, providing women with leadership opportunities and professional development, expanding
networking and exhibition opportunities for women, supporting local, national and global art activism and
advocating for equity in the arts for all.
For more information:
Janice Nesser-Chu, President WCA
president@nationalwca.org
314 956 5036
Lifetime Achievement Awardees 2012
Whitney Chadwick is Professor Emerita of San Francisco State University. During
2011-2012, she is a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard
University. An abbreviated list of her publications include: The Modern Woman
Revisited: Paris Between the Wars (Editor, with Tirza True Latimer), 2003; Leonora
Carrington: La Realidad de la Imaginacion (Mexico City: Ediciones ERA, 1994);
Women, Art, and Society (London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 1990); and
Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985).
Suzanne Lacy’s work includes installations, video, and large-scale performances on
social themes. Her recent work includes The Tatooed Skeleton for the Museo Nacional
Centro Reina Sofia in Madrid, the performance of Prostitution Notes at the Serpentine
Marathon, Anyang Women’s Agenda in Anyang, Korea (with photographer Raul Vega),
The University of Local Knowledge with the Arnolfini Gallery and the Knowle West
Community Centre and an installation in the Medellin Biennale recuperating The Skin
of Memory, with Pilar Riano. Also known for her writing, Lacy edited the influential
Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, and recently released Leaving Art:
Writings on Performance, Politics, and Publics, 1974-2007. Lacy is the Chair of the
Graduate Public Practice Program at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles.
Ferris Olin, Rutgers University professor, curator, arts administrator, women’s studies
scholar, librarian, and institution builder, works at the nexus of academia,
entrepreneurship, and feminist visual arts. She has played a crucial role in insuring that
the aesthetic and intellectual impact of women and diverse communities is recognized
and documented in the cultural record. Her vision in co-founding and co-directing four
institutions—the Institute for Women and Art, The Feminist Art Project, the Miriam
Schapiro Archives on Women Artists, and the Women Artists Archive National
Directory, as well as leading the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series.
Bernice Steinbaum founded her successful New York gallery in 1977. Throughout her
career, Steinbaum has demonstrated a commitment to showing the work of women
artists and creating both edgy and intelligent exhibitions. In 2000, she closed her
gallery in New York and relocated to Miami, where her Bernice Steinbaum Gallery has
transformed the arts community. Presently, Steinbaum represents leading contemporary
artists such as Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Luis Gonzalez Palma, Pepón Osorio,
and Deborah Willis.
Trinh T. Minh-ha is a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. She is an
accomplished filmmaker, composer, author, and installation artist. Her work has been
widely recognized and she is the recipient of fellowships from Guggenheim
Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the California Arts Council. An
abbreviated list of films includes: Reassemblage (1982), Surname Viet Given Name
Nam (1989), The Fourth Dimension (2001), and Night Passage (2004)
PRESIDENT’S AWARDEES FOR ART & ACTIVISM
Karen Mary Davalos is chair and associate professor of Chicana/o Studies at Loyola
Marymount University in Los Angeles. She has published widely on Chicana and
Chicano art, spirituality, and public and museum culture. She is the only scholar to
have written two books on Chicano museums, Exhibiting Mestizaje: Mexican
(American) Museums in the Diaspora (University of New Mexico Press, 2001) and
The Mexican Museum of San Francisco Papers, 1971-2006 (The Chicano Archives,
vol. 3, UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press, 2010). Her book, Yolanda M.
López, (UCLA CSRC Press with distribution by University of Minnesota Press,
2008), brings together her research and teaching interests in Chicana feminist
scholarship, spirituality, art, exhibition practices, and oral history.
Cathy Salser has dedicated the last 20 years to working with battered women and
their children, offering art as a catalyst of healing and empowerment. In 1991, Cathy
began A Window Between Worlds as a one-summer art project intended to share art
in a way that “might make a difference.” What she saw, and what made
A Window Between Worlds grow to reach over 60,000 participants annually today,
is the confirmation again and again that even a single art session could change a
survivor’s live forever. In 2007, Salser was the recipient of the Bank of America
Local Hero award, and in January 2008 she was selected from tens of thousands of
applicants and honored with the prestigious Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund Award.
WCA MEDIA AWARD
Lynn Hershman Leeson is a recipient of the 2010-2011 develop digital art and the
2009 SIGGRAPH Lifetime Achievement Awards. Hershman also recently received
the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Over the last three
decades, artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson has been internationally
acclaimed for her pioneering use of new technologies and her investigations of
issues that are now recognized as key to the working of our society: identity in a
time of consumerism, privacy in a era of surveillance, interfacing of humans and
machines, and the relationship between real and virtual worlds.
For the next discussion we are going to explore the life and work of Agnes Martin. To get the juices flowing I’ve put together todays blog post. The biographical information I collected from the sites www.studiocleo.com, www.ndoylefineart.com and of course Wikipedia. Agnes was born in 1912 in Canada. She moved to the USA in 1931. She died on December 16, 2004.
I have nearly finished a biography on Louise Nevelson and I must say that I am hooked on reading the next artists story... Reading and learning about these lives, struggles and work of strong, creative and talented artist is surely inspiring. 
