Arlene Raven: An Interview

Arlene Raven (1944-2006) was a feminist historian, theoretician, poet, and art historian who has published numerous books on contemporary art and written criticism for The Village Voice and a variety of other newspapers, art magazines, exhibition catalogues, and scholarly journals since 1969. She is a pioneer in progressive education and was an architect of the educational programs of the Feminist Studio Workshop, an independent school. She is also the founder of the Women’s Caucus for Art, the Los Angeles Woman’s Building, and Chrysalis magazine. She became interested in art at an early age, believing that it separated all the boring facts of life into something magical and special.

“At the Woman’s Building, we developed a theory of feminist education which was a transition from the way that women relate to one another through competition, isolation, and silence, to a situation of support. Women have the supreme ability, through acculturation, not to criticize, and I strongly believe that we shape one another through our criticism,” she says in this interview with Lyn Blumenthal.

A historical interview originally recorded in 1979 and re-edited in 2007 with support from the Lyn Blumenthal Memorial Fund.