Women Faculty, Craft, and the Postwar Divide

At its inception in 1919, UCLA's art history faculty was made up almost entirely of women. This is due to the fact that until 1939 the University (initially established as the University of California, Southern Branch) offered an arts concentration only through its Teacher's College. The early craft-based program-- which included illustration, set design, textiles, and metalwork--was intended for women studying to become art teachers, not artists. It was only in the 1950s, when the applied arts were supplanted by the so-called "fine arts" in an effort to professionalize the program, that the majority of faculty appointments and a growing number of the student body became men.

This story of the department's female faculty—some of whom remained with the department through its postwar transition, including Annita Delano, Laura Andreson, and Dorothy Brown—has, to a large degree, been forgotten. Yet the Hammer's collections bear witness to this history, as well as to the prominence of recent faculty members—including Mary Kelly, Barbara Kruger, and Andrea Fraser—whose interest in critical social practice has once again revolutionized artistic discourse.