Never Done: 100 Years of Women in Politics and Beyond

Never Done: 100 Years of Women in Politics and Beyond takes the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment as the occasion for reflection and exploration of the issues and challenges women in the United States have faced, and continue to face, in politics and society.

What has been accomplished in the last 100 years, and what has yet to be accomplished?

The fight for the 19th amendment was achieved through marches, demonstrations, and protest tactics that are still used today. And in the current moment of protest and activism around racism in the United States, Never Done speaks to the role of race and class in shaping women’s participation in politics and the public sphere.

When the 19th amendment—which stated that US citizens could not be denied the right to vote based on their sex—was ratified in 1920, many women were still denied this right. While the federal suffrage amendment prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex, it did not address the intersectional discrimination that many American women faced: women from marginalized communities continued to face obstacles because of their race. Native American, Asian American, Latinx, and African American suffragists had to fight for their own enfranchisement long after the 19th Amendment was ratified.

Never Done is intended to be a celebration, a conversation, a critique, and a commemoration of the journey women have taken and have yet to take. Never Done aims to go beyond politics to create conversations about art, gender, race, and intersectional identities. To do so, this exhibition presents artwork by a diverse group of women: Black, brown, Indigenous, LGBTQ, and differently-abled women and non-binary artists; artists working in photography, painting, printmaking, collage, textile, and sculpture; artists from across the United States and from different generations. Moreover, statements from each artist reflect on their work in relation to women’s rights, feminisms, justice and representation, and the legacy of the suffrage movement. Taken together, this project reveals the myriad of different experiences women have and the multiplicity of views and modes of expression that women employ to communicate what is important to them.

—Rachel Seligman and Minita Sanghvi

Art+Feminism

Art+Feminism is an intersectional feminist non-profit organization that directly addresses the information gap about gender, feminism, and the arts on the internet.

Asian American Feminist Collective

This organization seeks to address the multi-dimensional ways Asian/American people confront systems of power at the intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, religion, disability, migration history, citizenship and immigration status, through community building and public and political education.

Bitch Media

Bitch Media is a feminist response to pop culture, run by the company that publishes Bitch Magazine.

Black Women Radicals

Black Women Radicals (BWR) is a Black feminist advocacy organization dedicated to uplifting and centering the radical political activism of Black women and gender non-conforming and non-binary people.

Center for American Women and Politics

CAWP is part of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers, and a nationally recognized leader of scholarly research and current data about women’s political participation in the US. Its mission is to promote greater knowledge and understanding about the role of women in American politics, enhance women’s influence in public life, and expand the diversity of women in politics and government.

Crunk Feminist Collective

With the tag line “Where crunk meets conscious and Feminism meets cool” this blog is a site for discussion among the hip hop generation of feminists of color.

Feminist Art Coalition

With a mission to “Engage. Reflect. Act.” the FAC is a platform for art projects informed by feminisms.

The Feminist Institute

Access and download issues of HERESIES; A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics, published by the New York-based group the Heresies Collective from 1977–1992.

Feministing

The blog Feministing shut down after 15 years of publishing but the site archives are still available with a critical variety of writings on a broad range of intersectional feminist issues.