The exhibition “Women Choose Women,” which has opened at the New York Cultural Center, 2 Columbus Circle, is billed as “the first major museum exhibition in New York to focus on the work of women artists.” Its function is both political and esthetic, On both scores, it should be said, it is successful—with qualifications.

The political purpose of the show is to redress the balance in the male‐dominated art establishment in which, as the art critic Lucy R. Lippard charges in her introductory text, “New York museums have been particularly discriminatory, usually under the guise of being discriminating.” The exhibition was selected by a jury of women, chiefly artists, art workers and critics, most of them associated with the sponsoring organization, Women in the Arts, a recently formed group that numbers some 400 women artists. The only male member of the selection committee was Mario Amaya, the director of the Cultural Center, who served as a consultant with voting rights.

One or two critical objections come to mind: The first, and most obvious, is that the title and premise of the show sacrifice the principle that art should be considered as art without regard to sex. That seemed to be one of the objectives of the women's ‘movement.’ The second is the absence of such artists as Louise Nevelson and Helen Frankenthaler. These are artists, however, who do not need the exposure, and the exhibition does concentrate on artists who are less well known, many of whose works have never seen shown in a major museum.

As an exhibition, “Women Choose Women” is about as good a group show as one is likely to find on the art circuit these days. When the work is good, it is very good, and when it is bad, it is not horrid, only derivative.

The exhibition runs the gamut of recent styles: in painting, from abstraction to the resurgent realism that has been settling into the galleries; in sculpture, from Funk art to constructivism.

For this observer, the strongest showing is made by the realist painters. There are excellent works, here, by Nell Blaine, Alice Neel, Mary Suzuki, Phyllis Floyd. Especially notable also are Lois Dodd's glaring interior view with a window blacked out by night, Carolyn Schock's beautifully rendered still life, “The Iris,” and Nancy Maass Mosen's portrait of a dog, “Griswald,” with its masterly handling of color and pattern. Strictly in the turnthe‐tables department, there are examples that prove that women artists can treat the male nude as a sex object and also paint a female nude as lustily as her male counterpart.

But there are some fine abstractions, too: Alice Baber's delicate veils of color, Carmen Herrera's incisive geometry, in “Cobalto y Blanco,” and Iria's handsomely tapestried “Wish Answered.” Among the sculptors, there are formidable works by Mary Frank, Louise Kramer and Anita Magrill.

Some final quirky observations: There is a noticeable emphasis on odd, homey materials—curtain and drapery fabrics—and the subject matter of certain pictures, such as pomegranates or pears split in half, seem to insist on Freudian interpretations as symbols of the eternal feminine. Women, too, appear to have a natural instinct for color. Or is that another male myth learned at a mother's knee?

Mellow, J. R. (1973, January 14). Art: Focusing on Works by Women. The New York Times, 57. https://www.nytimes.com/1973/01/14/archives/art-focusing-on-works-by-women.html