The idea for the Women's Interart Center emerged in 1969 from the meetings of a group of women from various creative disciplines who gathered regularly in
Lower Manhattan artist's lofts and other repurposed spaces to present their work to each other. In the summer of 1970, an overlapping group of artists affiliated with
Women Artists in Revolution (WAR) and Feminists in the Arts requested a grant of $55,000 from the
New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) to acquire a five-story building with space for administrative offices, galleries, and photography and graphics workshops. After the group's proposal was turned down, artists including
Muriel Castanis, Nancy Edelstein, Jan McDevitt, and
Jacqueline Skiles staged a protest on October 27, 1970. They ultimately received a grant of $5,000. As later described by both critic
Lucy R. Lippard and scholar
Julie Ault, it was the "first women's alternative space" in New York. Co-founder and co-director Jacqueline Skiles oversaw the graphics workshops, and sculptor
Dorothy Gillespie was an artist-in-residence. Among the other founding members were filmmaker and photographer Susan Kleckner and actor Margot Lewitin, former stage manager of
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. In October 1971, the Center was registered with the state as a nonprofit corporation with a mission to "encourage and advance the development and expression of women's skills and creativity in all areas of the arts." A more substantial NYSCA grant the following year helped the group, encompassing over a hundred artist-members, to expand operations. In early 1972, the Center held a massive "open show" with works by celebrated painters such as
Louise Nevelson,
Faith Ringgold, and
Mimi Schapiro, along with other well-known figures including
Yoko Ono,
Judy Chicago, and
Kate Millett. Later that year, the Center presented its first stage play:
Random Violence by
Jane Chambers, a key initiator of the group's theater program; first-time director Margot Lewitin would go on to direct and produce dozens of plays in the space. By 1973, Lewitin was leading the Women's Interart Center as a whole; Susan Milano, co-founder of the first Women's Video Festival at
The Kitchen, joined to head up a new video program. That same year saw
Louise Bourgeois design the sets, costumes, and poster for a Center stage production. The multimedia organization by 1976 comprised an art gallery,
off-off-Broadway theater, artist-in-residence studios, and workshops for silkscreen, ceramics, painting, film, and video, occupying five floors of the original site and another floor in a nearby building.
Gillian Ayres,
Martha Edelheit,
Howardena Pindell, a young
Sophie Rivera, and
Alice Neel, who participated in six shows in the mid-1970s. In 1975, Faith Ringgold curated an exhibition of black women artists. The following year at the Center, Ringgold, filmmaker Monica Freeman, poet
Patricia Spears Jones, and critics
Margo Jefferson and
Michele Wallace organized the
Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts, recognized as the "first ever Black women's film festival". In 1978 and 1979, the Center held festivals of women's music, with concerts at other Manhattan venues as well as the Interart Gallery. With Lewitin serving as artistic director for more than four decades, the Center presented many hundreds of performance, media, and visual arts events. Other award-winning Interart productions were directed by
Glenda Dickerson and
Estelle Parsons. In 1985,
Joseph Chaikin directed a new adaptation of work by
Adrienne Kennedy.
Wendy Kesselman,
Myrna Lamb, and
Susan Yankowitz were among the many women playwrights to have works premiere at the theater. In the middle of the decade, Interart received a
Drama Desk Special Award "for nurturing women theater artists" and Lewitin was similarly honored by the
Dramatists Guild of America. The Interart Annex at 53rd Street and 11th Avenue, one block from the Center's main location, presented plays in development as well as dance and experimental works. The Center's stages together provided a reliable "home base" for the Women's Experimental Theatre, led by
Roberta Sklar and Sondra Segal. The Center also vigorously promoted new and transdisciplinary media as exhibitor, producer, and educational institution. The annual Women's Video Festival relocated to the Center from 1975 through 1980, launching a catalogue and traveling show. In 1978, Susan Milano produced a major video installation exhibit,
Back Seat. As an Interart artist-in-residence a few years later,
Shirley Clarke created two innovative video pieces,
Savage/Love and
Tongues, in collaboration with Joseph Chaikin and
Sam Shepard.
PBS's
Alive from Off Center aired
Tongues in 1985 and, the following year, the Center's award-winning video production of
Lee Breuer's "doo-wop opera"
Sister Suzie Cinema. Interdisciplinary works by
Meredith Monk and Lee Nagrin were produced by the Center at venues such as the
Brooklyn Academy of Music,
St. Mark's Church, and La MaMa. In the 1980s, the Center became increasingly involved in community efforts to resist attempts by the city and major developers to transform the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood—specifically, the six-square-block
Clinton Urban Renewal Area (CURA)—through the construction of luxury highrises and eviction of arts groups. In 1986, after four years of struggle, a community coalition with the Center at its heart defeated such a plan put forward by
Ed Koch, New York's nominally "liberal" mayor. The local coalition sponsored a community-conceived development plan for the CURA intended to preserve its mix of working-class residents, small businesses, and nonprofit cultural organizations. The Clinton Community Master Plan, designed by Peterson Littenberg Architects, won urban design awards from
Progressive Architecture and the
American Institute of Architects. In 1993, the Interart Theatre premiered a fully staged production of an opera by
Sorrel Hays. With the city allowing the Center's main building, its elevators in particular, to fall into disrepair, it became increasingly infeasible to bring audiences to the 10th-floor theater. In 2002, a water tower collapse at 549 destroyed the gallery and left the Center with only one usable floor in its home building. In 2016, to make way for a development project, the Center was evicted from both of its city-owned locations and shut down. == Archives ==