The Bay Area Women Artists (BAWALP) Legacy Project aims to both safeguard and highlight women’s contribution to Bay Area art. We believe that any understanding of the local art scene in the past 50 years requires a full examination of women’s contributions. Yet this possibility will be lost unless art institutions, curators, and historians join in an effort to preserve the legacy of Bay Area women artists. 

The statistics are alarming. As the Guerrilla Girls and others have clearly shown, women continue to be under-represented in museum shows and collections and undervalued at art auctions. One consequence is that few women are able to afford the creation of a foundation to oversee their legacy. Institutional support is needed.

We intend this website to open a dialogue on this issue. All of us have been practicing art for more than 20 years and have shown extensively. In addition, many of us have been active in feminist art groups since the 1970s, helping to increase the visibility of women artists throughout the Bay Area. We want to be sure that our contributions and those of other local women artists do not disappear.