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The following books were selected in support of the exhibition Margin to Mainstream – Recognizing Women Artists.

All the resources listed below are available for free to GVSU students, faculty, and staff through the University Libraries using your GVSU login credentials or library card. Special thanks to University librarian Amber Dierking for their support of our exhibition reading lists.

eBook: Dismantling the Patriarchy, Bit by Bit: Art, Feminism, and Digital Technology

By Judith K. Brodsky

Judith K. Brodsky makes a groundbreaking intellectual leap by connecting feminist art theory with the rise of digital art. Technology has commonly been considered the domain of white men, but- unrecognized until this book-female artists, including women artists of color, have been innovators in the digital art arena as early as the late 1960s, when computers first became available outside of government and university laboratories.

Find "Dismantling the Patriarchy" at the GVSU University Libraries.

Book: Women, Art, and Society

By Whitney Chadwick
New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002

This acclaimed study challenges the assumption that great women artists are exceptions to the rule who "transcended" their sex to produce major works of art. While acknowledging the many women whose contributions to visual culture since the Middle Ages have often been neglected, Chadwick's survey amounts to much more than an alternative canon of women artists: it re-examines the works themselves and how they have been perceived as marginal, often in direct reference to gender. In her discussion of feminism and its influence on such a reappraisal, the author also addresses the closely related issues of ethnicity, class, and sexuality.

Find "Women, Art, and Society" at the GVSU University Libraries.

DVD Video: Women Artists: the other side of the picture

Directed by Andrew Gardner

This documentary explores the social history of women in the fine arts—addressing historical suppression, marginalization, and omission—while highlighting institutional efforts like the National Museum of Women in the Arts to rebalance the historical record.

Find "Women Artists" at the GVSU University Libraries.

Book: 25 Women: Essays on Their Art

By Dave Hickey
Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2016

This is far more than a compilation: Hickey has revised each essay, bringing them up to date and drawing out common themes. Written in Hickey's trademark style--accessible, witty, and powerfully illuminating--25 Women analyzes the work of Joan Mitchell, Bridget Riley, Fiona Rae, Lynda Benglis, Karen Carson, and many others. Hickey discusses their work as work, bringing politics and gender into the discussion only where it seems warranted by the art itself. The resulting book is not only a deep engagement with some of the most influential and innovative contemporary artists, but also a reflection on the life and role of the critic: the decisions, judgments, politics, and ethics that critics negotiate throughout their careers in the art world.

Find "25 Women" at the GVSU University Libraries.

eBook: We Make Each Other Beautiful: Art, Activism, and the Law

By Yxta Maya Murray
Ithaca, NY Cornell University Press, 2024

We Make Each Other Beautiful focuses on women of color and queer of color artists and artist collectives who engage in direct political action as a part of their art practice. Defined by public protest, rule-breaking, rebellion, and resistance to governmental and institutional abuse, direct-action "artivism" draws on the aims, radical spirit, and tactics of the civil rights and feminist movements and on the struggles for disability rights, queer rights, and immigrant rights to seek legal and social change.

Find "We Make Each Other Beautiful" at the GVSU University Libraries.

Book: Gender and Art

Edited by Gill Perry
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999

Encompassing European art, architecture, and design from the 16th century to the present day, Gender and Art uses case studies to examine the role of gender difference in the production, consumption, and interpretation of works of art.

Find "Gender and Art" at the GVSU University Libraries.

Book: Art and Feminism

Edited by Helena Reckitt and Peggy Phelan
London: Phaidon, 2006.

 Feminism has had a crucial impact on late twentieth-century art, inspiring some of the most pioneering developments in sculpture, painting, performance, photography, film and installation. The art world has been transformed by feminists who at the same time have been among its chief critics. It has redefined the very terms of late twentieth-century art, exposing assumptions about gender, politicizing the link between private and public, and stressing the specificity of art marked by gender, race, age, and class.

Find "Art and Feminism" at the GVSU University Libraries.

eBook: Gendered Aesthetics of Blackness: Afro-Cuban Women's Visual ARt and Activism

By Rosita Scerbo
Albany: State University of New York Press, 2025

Gendered Aesthetics of Blackness delves deeply into the visual artistry and activism of Afro-Cuban women in Cuba and the United States. Influential in their communities yet overlooked in the mainstream art world and academic discourse, Harmonia Rosales, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Belkis Ayón, and Susana Pilar practice what Rosita Scerbo calls "Decolonial AfroARTivism." These women use their art to challenge and disrupt dominant narratives, reclaim their identities and cultural heritage, and advocate for social justice.

Find "Gendered Aesthetics" at the GVSU University Libraries.