Sarah Stifler. . ."Slippery When Wet"

I received a grant from the Center for Feminist Research that allowed me to travel to New York City this past June and complete significant research for my dissertation. The title of my dissertation is “Slippery When Wet: Visibility Politics and Lesbian Art in Los Angeles from 1970 to the Present.” The primary reason for the trip was to sift through material at the Lesbian Herstory archive in Brooklyn. This archive is one of the most comprehensive collections of material that documents and preserves recent lesbian histories. Not only did I come across some significant research material for my project but I also had a chance to discuss my topic and subsequent research with several of the women who volunteer at the archive. These women provided keen insights and welcomed encouragement for my continued work on the dissertation. The trip was an enormous scholarly success that ended up having a ‘networking’ component with women who have not only been involved in practical politics of feminism and lesbian rights but are also dedicated to the history of the political, social, and cultural battles that have been waged in the name of sexual freedom and women’s rights.

My dissertation explores the ways that lesbian artists have been often overlooked, even in alternative and feminist projects in art history. Lesbian histories and experiences have been underrepresented even in self-identified queer art exhibitions such as In a Different Light: Visual Culture, Sexual Identity, Queer Practice, which opened at the University Art Museum in Berkeley, California, in January 1995. Curated by Nayland Blake, a San Francisco-based artist, and by Lawrence Rinder, the museum’s curator for twentieth-century art at the time, the show was immensely important in terms of gay and lesbian representation and visibility in the world of high art. However, as Cecilia Dogherty notes, “work by women, especially by lesbians, was the most misrepresented, under-represented, and misinterpreted in the exhibit.”(“Identity Crisis,” New Art Examiner, September 1995, 29). As Rinder explains in the exhibition catalogue, the show “explores the resonance of gay and lesbian experience in twentieth-century American art [and] … sheds new light on our collective history” (introduction to In a Different Light: Visual Culture, Sexual Identity, Queer Practice, ed. Nayland Blake, Lawrence Rinder, and Amy Scholder [San Francisico: City Lights, 1995],1). But the exhibition and its catalogue did very little to investigate and illustrate properly the resonance or histories of the lesbian experience and its relationship to the women’s movement and broader issues of feminism.

My dissertation aims to explore more thoroughly the experiences of lesbian artists and their relationship to the women’s movement, gay liberation, and the history of contemporary art. My visit to the Lesbian Herstory archive was critical. The archive houses a wealth of information – articles from alternative presses, correspondences between artists and activists, as well as slides of art exhibitions that are imperative to my research. The grant from the Center for Feminist Research enabled me to make this trip and to conduct a very significant portion of my dissertation research.