The Amazing Decade of Women’s Performance Art

This was an exhibition of photographs documenting the development of performance art in the United States. Organized by High Performance, the exhibition contained photo-documentation of performance art events by 37 women artists including Laurie Anderson, Eleanor Antin, Jacki Apple, Betsy Damon, Mary Beth Edelson, Feminist Art Workers, Tina Girouard, Donna Henes, Suzanne Lacy, Mierle Laderman Ukeles and Martha Wilson.

“The Amazing Decade” was organized by Mary Jane Jacobs of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and Moira Roth, art historian and critic. Performance art, a new medium created largely by women in the 1960s and 1970s, combines narrartion, ritual, theatre, movement, and mixed-media.

Above, performance artist Suzanne Lacy plans her current project: “Whisper, the Waves, the Wind,” an outdoor tableau on women and aging. Lacy will lecture on her work and show her videotapes on April 20, 1984.