Narrator: Until 1986, the classic textbook Janson's "History of Art" included zero women artists.

Times have changed a bit, but women as serious players in the art world still have a short history.

On this special edition of "State of the Arts," we take a trip back visiting some significant moments from the recent past.

In 2017, The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey revisited a groundbreaking 1973 show in New York -- "Women Choose Women."

Kozloff: Many of us artists -- women artists -- were part of a feminist movement in art, and this was the first real big museum show.

Narrator: In 2016, a collaborative feminist work from the late 1970s was recreated at Rowan University -- the Sister Chapel.

It was just incredible.

Mailman: It's kind of hard to relate to because I did the painting 35 years ago, and it was really a very astonishing painting at the time and I walked in and I just thought it was fantastic.

Narrator: In 2012 and '13, "The Fertile Crescent" brought an international constellation of artists to Rutgers and Princeton Universities with work that explored what it means to be a woman from the Middle East.

And in 2019, Julie Heffernan completed a series of paintings that took a playful look at the serious business of women in art.

Heffernan: This was the first one of this series, and I was just starting to give myself permission to surround myself with these women who I admire so much.

Narrator: Coming up, take a journey with "State of the Arts" as we explore women in the art world.

The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, encouraging excellence and engagement in the arts since 1966 is proud to co-produce "State of the Arts" with Stockton University.

Additional support is provided by by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and these friends of State of the Arts.

Narrator: At the very modern Visual Arts Center of New Jersey in Summit, there's a tribute to a different time -- 1973.

Birmingham: I came across a reference to an exhibition from 1973.

I saw the exhibition title "Women Choose Women," and it kind of fascinated me because I had never heard of the show, and I thought, "What was that about?"

So, I ordered the catalogue, found an old copy of it, and discovered that it was the first museum survey in New York City that featured all female artists, and it was organized by women.

Kozloff: It was a big deal at the time.

There were 109 artists in the original show.

And I remember going to the opening and finding it very exciting and being very happy that I was in it and that it happened, because many of us artists -- women artists -- were part of a feminist movement in art, and this was the first real big museum show.

Narrator: "Women Choose Women Again" features 13 artists from the first show.

Joan Snyder has a painting based on "Proserpina," the last song written by Kate McGarrigle.

McGarrigle: ♪ Proserpina ♪ ♪ Proserpina ♪ ♪ Come home to mama ♪ Narrator: Faith Ringgold has one of her story quilts.

Birmingham: And this one is particularly, I think, meaningful to a lot of people, talking about her ongoing struggle to lose weight.

So she has, in the quilt, 17 portraits of herself nude at varying weights, and the text that surrounds this painting has to do with the idea of "What if you had a party and all of the people invited were you?"

Narrator: And there's Joyce Kozloff.

In the 1970s, she was one of the originators of the pattern and decoration movement.

Her work at the art center returns to some of these themes.

Kozloff: It's a new piece done in 2013, and it's going to be probably a 12-panel piece, but those were the first three panels that I finished.

And it's based on work I did in the 1970s.

I never thought I would return to that work, which was part of a movement called pattern and decoration.

This is one of the ones that's at the museum.

In my case and the case of a number of the women in the movement, it really had to do with the prejudice toward the decorative arts, which were the domain of women and people of color and were not what we studied in mainstream art history growing up.

And suddenly we started looking around, and there was kind of a revelation.

So, for me, I was using sources from the decorative arts, and I started expanding on it and doing these large pattern paintings.

And these are based on Islamic star patterns, which is a very complicated form of geometry.

I did that in the '70s, and then I moved into other things afterward.

I'd been working with mapping in the last 20 years and thinking that maybe I could bring the patterns and maps together.

So, it feels like I'm coming full circle, and I think a lot of older artists do that.

I've seen it.

I didn't think I would do it, but I've seen it happen a lot, where there's a kind of pulling things together, tieing things together, coming full circle, and there is something very satisfying about it.

Birmingham: You know, it's a completely different landscape now, so I asked each of these artists to invite another woman artist to join the show, making it "Women Choose Women Again," 40 years later.

Narrator: Joyce Kozloff chose an old friend, artist Judith Henry.

Henry: We were friends in college.

We went to Italy together one summer.

We studied Italian.

And when we moved to New York, we shared an apartment.

Narrator: The art center is showing work from Judith Henry's series "Girls, Girls, Girls."

Birmingham: In this, she is restaging the high-school yearbook portraits of girls from all over the United States in different time periods, different social strata.

She makes a sketch of each girl's face and uses that sketch as a mask and poses holding the mask.

Narrator: It all started with a high-school yearbook from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, circa 1991, found on a bookshelf in a vacation rental in Paris.

That led Judith Henry back to her own yearbook.

Henry: Now, my yearbook was 1960, Shaker Heights, Ohio, [ Chuckling ] if you can believe that.

That's -- [ laughs ] The thing about the high-school yearbooks is they're always in a grid, and the grid allows the same amount of space for each girl, and it allows you to see them all lined up the same.

So, I decided to use the grid.

I drew these girls.

I made them mask-size, and I held them with my hands, and, in fact, what I was doing was hiding behind a young girl and masquerading as a high-school student, and that idea fascinated me.

Also, the difference between Shaker Heights in 1960 and Cedar Rapids in 1991 was fascinating.

So, I decided to make a whole series.

I don't know if they feel awkward, but it is an awkward age.

They're going out into the world.

They have no clue as to what their life is about.

I'm looking at life from a different perspective, and, also, when I think back of my high-school years and how naive I was and how little I knew...

So, I wanted to do women who have already accomplished a lot in life, kind of the other side of it.

I wanted to bring them all to my neighborhood.

I wanted to see what I could feel like being Virginia Woolf, say, in my neighborhood, which is Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

These people are known, and I wanted them to be photographs.

I didn't want them to be drawings that I did.

These are just anonymous high-school girls that I drew, and this is from "Girls, Girls, Girls."

Kozloff: The faces are the faces of these girls from these high-school yearbooks, but she is using her own hands in all of them.

To me, there's something very touching about that because those are older hands and younger faces.

And I love the way they're drawn.

I mean, there's something very quirky and personal about the way they're drawn and the whole idea of it.

Birmingham: I chose 13 women from the original show, and they each chose another woman, so it really became about this network.

I also think that if a young female artist feels she doesn't have to be a feminist, she should thank some of these women who were feminists in the 1970s, because perhaps that's why it's a little bit easier today because of the efforts of women like these.

Narrator: In the 1960s and '70s, women artists were changing the rules of the art world.

Our next story features a group of feminists with a vision for a Sister Chapel.

[ Woman vocalizing ] Mailman: I thought it was just incredible.

It was kind of hard to relate to because I did the painting 35 years ago, and it was really a very astonishing painting at the time.

When I walked in, I just thought it was fantastic, and they all really look good, and they look fresh and new, and they could've been done yesterday.

Narrator: But they weren't done yesterday.

The Sister Chapel -- a play on the Sistine Chapel -- has been re-created at the Rowan University Art Gallery West.

The last time the paintings were all seen together was in 1980.

In the spirit of those times, it was a feminist artwork and a collaboration.

13 paintings by 13 artists.

Hottle: It was conceived by an artist named Ilise Greenstein in 1974, and she was trying to create a Hall of Fame for women.

She sought out collaborators, a number of other women, and slowly, different artists came onboard.

And together, they developed a large-scale installation celebrating women's achievements.

Mailman: The assignment was for each of us to do the idea, the epitome of our female hero, heroine, and, of course, we had the size restriction, that it had to be a full-sized figure on that size canvas.

And I decided that a Sister Chapel should have a sister God.

Narrator: Some of the artists came to the opening.

Others are no longer alive.

Betty Holliday painted the poet Marianne Moore.

Shirley Gorelick chose as her subject the artist Frida Kahlo.

Alice Neel, considered one of America's greatest painters, made a portrait of New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug in her trademark red hat.

The artist Ilise Greenstein, who conceived the idea for the Sister Chapel, created the ceiling.

Kurz: It feels like sky.

It's supposed to be like the journey through life after the way the colors change.

And, of course, with the reflection, it reflects us, and it also reflects the paintings.

It's a wonderful conception.

My painting is Durga, who is a Hindu goddess.

I wanted something to represent not Western European background.

I was very interested in Eastern religions, so it seemed like a natural thing, to choose something which was already close to my heart, that I had some knowledge of, and also represent another part of the world.

And I tell you, when I walked in and I saw her here, I thought she looked really good.

Salvante: Yeah, the artists are here, and they're seeing each other, and they're so happy, excited.

Really, it's like a reunion.

You know, this was done over 30 years ago, and as far as they were concerned, no one was ever gonna hear about it ever again in their lifetimes.

Unfortunately, we've lost some of these artists already.

And here they are, seeing it, and they're just so thankful and just so delighted and so excited.

Hottle: It's a very important period in the history of art.

There's a great deal of work to be done.

These women are not -- They're not given the kind of attention they deserve.

And this particular moment is passing into history.

So if we don't preserve some of this now, we will lose it.

Narrator: Professor Andrew Hottle and Gallery Director Mary Salvante did more than juste preserve the Sister Chapel.

They helped to finish it.

The tent was designed in 1976, but there was never the money to build it.

It's now been constructed according to the original plan by Maureen Connor.

And one of the paintings had been lost, probably destroyed, but Professor Hottle was on a mission to recreate the Sister Chapel, and he wasn't about to give up.

Wybrants: He wanted me to re-create it.

I had never thought of doing that.

And so I did.

I first did a copy.

I projected the original, you know, and gridded it up, and I tried to do a copy, and it was just dead.

It was soulless.

It had no power.

And I said, "Andrew, it has to be much better.

I've been working all these years.

I still make a lot of art all the time."

So I kept going down to Rowan, and he and Mary kept making it available, and I would just camp in the gallery.

And we'd pull it out from storage, and I worked on it -- maybe I came down four or five times for three or four days, and I would work in there till 2:00 in the morning, you know, have food brought in.

Andrew would come and bring me coffee.

And I would be running up and down the ladder, trying to make it work, you know?

And now I feel like I like it better than the original.

Hottle: To me, the goal has always been about bringing this back and bringing it to the public, because it has to be seen to be experienced.

Photographs just don't do it justice.

Mailman: It's really thrilling to see it.

Really thrilling.

Narrator: Around the world, women make art exploring their lives and the world around them.

Next up, the artists from Iran, Israel, and Nigeria.

[ Dramatic Middle Eastern music playing ] Forouhar: What I want is that both sides are seen.

What I really hate is the simplifying and just seeing one side of it.

Otherwise, we become very stereotyping if you go just in one direction.

So putting differences and a contrast in work avoid somehow this stereotyping.

♪♪ Landau: I'm showing -- In the exhibition, I'm showing a video work, three channels.

You can see the shoreline of the Mediterranean.

It was shot in the area of Caesarea in Israel.

I see the sea of Mediterranean -- It's a border in itself.

It's the only peaceful border.

On one side, I'm coming into the frame, and from the other side, another dancer, and we are both sort of plowing a shape in the sand, and it's a shape of the waves.

And we're like turning -- doing a certain dance and moving forwards towards meeting each other.

And all this time, the waves are sort of erasing our marks.

Barakeh: My father is from Jaffa, and his family was living there before 1948, before the creation of the Israeli state.

And, you know, in '48 he had to flee, and then he went to Lebanon, where he settled, and this is where I was born and raised.

[ Slow music plays ] So for me, Jaffa is a second home that I cannot access because I'm a descendant of a Palestinian who's left in '48.

So I made this video in which I imagine scenarios of return.

So, I go there, and I fight the British soldiers to fight the colonial power and to reverse history.

Narrator: The Middle East is steeped in history, beauty, and conflict, all legacies that were addressed in an ambitious series of exhibitions and events, "The Fertile Crescent, Gender, Art, and Society."

In 2012 and '13, "The Fertile Crescent" brought contemporary art made by women from the Middle East and its diaspora to galleries and other spaces at Rutgers and Princeton.

Brodsky: "The Fertile Crescent" was a term invented by an American archaeologist named James Breasted at the beginning of the 20th century.

And he invented it to refer to the area as being sort of the cradle of civilization where agriculture was -- in quotation marks -- "invented."

Narrator: "The Fertile Crescent" refers to both a geographic area and its role in the history of humankind.

Brodsky: And I think that's one of the characteristics of these artists, actually -- That they recognize they have history, but that they're all looking towards a new configuration, new cultural configurations.

Narrator: These artists are international.

Fatimah Tuggar, for instance, is from Kaduna in Northern Nigeria.

It's part of the Fertile Crescent's diaspora, but she studied in England, got her MFA at Yale, and is based in the United States.

In her work, Fatimah juxtaposes imagery from Africa and the West.

Woman: Can you say something about the technique or the technol-- Tuggar: Well, they're all montages, and I work with the computer to create the images.

Well, "at the meat market" depicts...a meat market.

[ Chuckles ] And you have a series of meat sellers, and then you have a bunch of different models that I got from different magazines.

And I'm sort of interested in this analogy or the relationship between commodification of human beings as models, you know, issues of human trafficking, how that sort of has a metaphor in this idea of selling meat.

Brodsky: It is a goal of all our programming and of the exhibitions to show this variety and also to show the sophistication.

I mean, these are artists who are operating on the world scene.

For instance, the one that we're looking at right now is a piece that is done from an airplane by an artist named Jananne al-Ani, and she's Iraqi, lives in London.

And the idea behind this piece is that she wants to show that the desert has been the repository of great civilizations, and she's opposing that to the view that Westerners have of the desert as being an arid place without anything of value in it.

So, these videos are really very interesting videos.

Olin: Somebody asked me, "Is this a political show?"

And my answer is, if you're working on the Middle East and you're working on gender, you are definitely going to be covering some areas of politics, and, of course, it's a political show, however you define politics.

Narrator: These women from Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Israel, Pakistan, and other places are creating art that interprets and illuminates their own experiences of the Middle East often challenging what we think we know.

Forouhar: I hope that this looking stereotype, typical looking at women from Middle East, seeing them always as being victimized -- I hope that would change.

Looking at the works, you see women who are trying to deal with their situations, and that is not being a victim.

Narrator: Looking back at art history with fresh eyes, once-invisible women artists begin to emerge.

Painter Julie Heffernan created a series about this phenomenon, calling it "Mending a Reflection."

Heffernan: I'm Julie Heffernan.

I teach at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

I have been a painter for 30 years, maybe longer.

Narrator: Julie Heffernan was born in the Midwest, grew up in the Bay Area, and now lives in Brooklyn.

She first came east for graduate school at Yale, but it wasn't until she was on a Fulbright Fellowship in Berlin that she really knew she could be an artist.

It was then that she began thinking visually.

She calls it image streaming.

Heffernan: It's a really interesting process.

I don't understand why it's not talked about more, because it's certainly something that anybody visual would experience.

I mean, I have asked people, "Do you have pictures that well up into your brain?"

And some people say, "Yes, I've had it since I was 2," and other people say, "I don't know what you're talking about.

I don't see visually.

I don't think visually at all."

Narrator: Julie's paintings are huge, full of detail and bring together an eclectic mix of references.

At the Rowan University Art Gallery, Julia is showing a new series called "Mending a Reflection."

In most of these paintings, a central figure gazes out at the viewer.

But it's by exploring what's around the woman that we discover what's on her mind.

Heffernan: It's almost like she's inviting you in, and then you can notice everything else.

Narrator: This series is all about women, both as they're depicted in paintings by male artists from the past and as images of the real women that Julie Heffernan herself admires.

Heffernan: This was the first one of this series, and I was just starting to give myself permission to surround myself with these women who I admire so much.

So I remember saying, oh, my God, do I let myself have Joni Mitchell?

There's Joni Mitchell.

Mitchell: ♪ Trina wears her wampum beads ♪ ♪ She fills her drawing book with line ♪ Heffernan: I also included Willa Cather, Louisa May Alcott.

She was the first female writer that that gave me a woman's world when I was just a little kid.

Nina Simone, Jane Campion, the filmmaker who made "The Piano."

Also in "Self-portrait with Daughters" as Artemisia Gentileschi who was one of the first female painters I'd ever heard of.

Not only was she an exquisite painter, but she had one of these MeToo lives.

Narrator: Some of these self-portraits have art supplies on the floor, colored pencils or paint brushes suggesting that they're works in progress.

Heffernan: Well, certainly the topical issues are age old.

I mean, the MeToo movement just put its finger on something that all of us, our mothers, our grandmothers have all experienced.

The paintings have become about how we might deal with them with these problems in inventive ways.

How creative we're going to have to be.

So I have my ploys to insinuate the ugliness through the beauty.

Narrator: Thanks for watching "Women in the Art World," a special edition of "State of the Arts."

For more about the show or to share story with a friend, visit StateoftheArtsNJ.com.