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WARM: A Women’s Collective Art Space

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Members of WARM

Members of the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota (WARM) gather on the fifth anniversary of the opening of WARM Gallery. Photograph by Judy Stone Nunnelly, 1981. From box 5 (152.F.1.1B) of the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota (WARM) organizational records. Manuscripts Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul.

In 1976, the doors opened to a new art gallery—the first in Minnesota dedicated exclusively to women artists. During its fifteen years of operation, WARM: A Women’s Collective Art Space (often referred to as the WARM Gallery) was at the center of women’s visual arts programming in the Twin Cities. Informed by second-wave feminism and in step with the national Women’s Art Movement, the WARM Gallery built a new arts community focused on promoting equality. It gave women artists the professional experiences necessary to compete in the art world and provided public access to women’s art, history, and theory.

The Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota (WARM) began in 1973 as a group dedicated to increasing public access to art made by women and creating opportunities for women artists. Membership was fee-based and open to any woman artist in the state. In its earliest years, WARM achieved its goals in two ways. First, the group arranged art exhibits at galleries, colleges, and public spaces. Second, it formed a slide registry. This registry functioned like a library of images of the members’ artworks and was made available to curators, collectors, educators, and the general public. Users could browse through the slides in person, request copies by mail, or see projections at monthly curated viewings. Because of these activities, word spread quickly about the group, and WARM’s membership and supportive community grew.

Opening a gallery space was a natural extension of the group’s goals. By January 1976, a lease for a street-level space in the Wyman Building in Minneapolis (414 First Avenue North) was signed, and renovations began. Thirty-seven WARM members became WARM Gallery collective members. They put in hundreds of hours of work to convert the space from a dark, dingy garment workshop to a pristine, white-walled exhibition space.

WARM: A Women’s Collective Art Space opened to the public on April 10, 1976, with an exhibition of the members’ artwork and a celebration that drew more than 1,500 visitors. Renowned feminist artist Miriam Shapiro attended. When interviewed for a Minneapolis Star Tribune article, Shapiro praised the gallery, saying “that it is the most elegant of the five such collective art galleries in the United States and that it is very professional.”

The gallery functioned as a base of operations for WARM’s activities. They included meetings, slide registration, performances, lectures, parties, classes, and collaborations with outside artists, museums, galleries, theaters, and arts organizations. During the gallery’s first ten years, members launched a slide- and tape-rental program featuring the scholarly and historical work of members and collaborators. They curated an invitational gallery featuring works by Joan Snyder, Harmony Hammond, and many others, and organized an outside exhibition program that promoted the work of members throughout Minnesota and beyond. Other achievements included a feminist art journal with over 5000 subscribers; an acclaimed mentor program; a feminist art lecture series with speakers like Grace Hartigan, Bettye Saar and Alice Neel; and a national conference, The Contemporary Woman in Visual Arts, with over 400 scholars and artists.

These ambitious activities were coordinated exclusively by WARM members and gallery members and were partially or fully funded by grants and outside donors. Often, grants came with stipulations that funds could not be used for day-to-day operating costs. The WARM Gallery’s operation costs were therefore funded primarily by its collective membership. Because members rejected the commercial gallery model, sales of artworks went directly to the artists. Other income came from journal subscriptions, multiple levels of memberships, and outside donors.

Around 1987, gallery membership changed as many of its founders left to pursue other opportunities and the next generation of artists joined. This shift, coupled with a growing operational debt and funding shortfalls, led to the closing of the gallery space in 1991. WARM continued, however, as a members-only group. It changed its name to The Women’s Art Resources of Minnesota and focused on the mentor program and outside exhibitions.

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Carroll, Heather. Roots and Fruits: Exploring the History and Impact of the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota (exhibition). St. Paul: Catherine G. Murphy Gallery at St. Catherine University, 2018.
http://gallery.stkate.edu/exhibitions/roots-and-fruits

Inglot, Joanna. WARM: A Feminist Art Collective in Minnesota. Minneapolis: Weisman Art Museum (distributed by the University of Minnesota Press), 2007.

“WARM: A Women’s Collective Art Space.” Gold Flower 4, no. 12 (June 1976): 1–2.

Women's Art Registry of Minnesota organizational records, 1962–2015 (bulk 1976–1988)
Manuscripts Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul
Description: Records documenting the members, activities, and philosophy of a women's art collective in Minneapolis.
http://www2.mnhs.org/library/findaids/00101.xml

Zack, Margaret. “Feminist Doesn’t Separate Her Work from Family Life.” Minneapolis Tribune, April 16, 1976.

Related Images

Members of WARM
Members of WARM
Street view of WARM Gallery
Street view of WARM Gallery
WARM Gallery inaugural exhibition poster
WARM Gallery inaugural exhibition poster
WARM Gallery poster
WARM Gallery poster
Harriet Bart and Hazel Belvo outside WARM gallery
Harriet Bart and Hazel Belvo outside WARM gallery
Women Invite Women catalog
Women Invite Women catalog

Turning Point

On April 10, 1976, thirty-seven members of the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota found WARM: A Women’s Collective Art Space. They aim to increase public access to art made by women and offer opportunities to women artists.

Chronology

1973

In the spring, the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota (WARM) is founded by Susan Fiene and Lynne Lockie. Membership in WARM is open to any woman artist in the state for a modest fee; members meet almost weekly.

1973

The Women’s Erotic Art Show at Cedar Cultural Center features the work of WARM members. The show succeeds in garnering press and attracting a large, curious audience.

1974

The Women’s Work 11 exhibition opens at the College of St. Catherine, which has a reputation for high-quality, museum-level exhibits. Though not sponsored by WARM, the show includes many WARM members.

1974

WARM members count the number of women exhibited at local art museums and institutions throughout their history. This research lays the groundwork for the success of future grant applications.

1975

WARM members help create the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP) at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and advocate exhibitions of women artists.

1975

The Woman Art exhibit at Normandale Community College includes sixty-five works by thirty-five of WARM’s fifty statewide members.

1976

WARM: A Women’s Collective Art Space opens in the Wyman Building in downtown Minneapolis on April 10. The gallery gives women artists legitimacy and a platform for feminist arts programming.

1977

WARM Invitational Gallery Space opens within the WARM Gallery and begins to exhibit the artwork of women outside of WARM.

1978

WARM’s member newsletter transforms into a journal, self-published three times a year, that includes articles, interviews, scholarship, reviews, photos, poetry, art, and a calendar of events.

1978

The Slide Tape Program, an educational media rental program, begins as a response to a lack of information about historical and contemporary women in the arts.

1981

“Feminist Perspective: Dialogs on Art” becomes a monthly lecture series “investigating cultural aspects...as seen from a woman’s perspective.”

1982

The Rent-a-Mentor program, the brainchild of artist, educator, and WARM Gallery member Judith Roode, begins with twelve mentors and twenty proteges, culminating in an exhibition at the WARM Gallery.

1986

Led by Susan McDonald, WARM hosts the Contemporary Woman in Visual Arts national conference. Women’s Sensibilities, a multi-gallery national juried exhibition, is led by Sandra Menefee Taylor. Gallery members throw a tenth-anniversary celebration.

1987

The gallery’s membership, scope, priorities, and funding change. The gallery collective spends the next five years focusing on exhibitions and the mentor program while struggling to meet operational budgets.

1991

A Women’s Collective Art Space closes. WARM continues as The Women’s Art Resources of Minnesota and focuses on the burgeoning mentor program and coordinating outside exhibitions.