September ArtHop pick: Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Gallery 25
By Donald Munro
Mark this down in the Book of Great Ideas: In 1974, Joyce Aiken, a groundbreaking professor of feminist art at Fresno State, founded Gallery 25, a cooperative gallery she envisioned as displaying and encouraging women artists.
Pictured above: Joan K. Sharma’s ‘Force of Nature,’ left, and Joy Johnson’s ‘Truth Abides in Fullness.’ Photos: Gallery 25
She probably never dreamed she’d be celebrating its anniversary 50 years later.
The gallery has changed over the years in terms of focus and presentation: In 1989, it started inviting men to be member artists. And after Covid made it hard for storefront galleries to stay open, Gallery 25 switched to an online format. For the past several years, it’s existed in a purely digital realm.
However, for the 50th anniversary celebration of the gallery’s founding, everything will be in person. A special exhibition opens at Scarab Creative Arts at 5 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 5.
The event is a highlight of September ArtHop, the monthly open house of galleries and studios in the downtown and Tower District neighborhoods. (Most venues are open 5-8 p.m.; go to the Fresno Arts Council’s website for more details.)
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In 2009, at the gallery’s 35th anniversary, I wrote in the Fresno Bee:
Gallery 25 was an offshoot of the burgeoning women’s artist movement of the early 1970s. The noted artist Judy Chicago, who had a guest professorship at Fresno State in 1970-71, helped spark the movement when she formed a collaborative women’s art class. (Another current show focuses on Chicago’s students in an exhibition titled “A Studio of Their Own: The Legacy of the Fresno Feminist Experiment, 1970,” on display at Fresno State’s Conley Art Gallery.) After Chicago moved on to the California Institute of the Arts, Aiken continued in the role of teacher and mentor to women artists at Fresno State. Gallery 25 grew out of one of Aiken’s classes, in fact, after she assigned the students to mount their own exhibitions. There were 16 original artists, including Aiken.
One of the artists represented will be Aiken, appropriately enough, who can be considered the grand dame of Fresno’s art world.Also represented in the exhibition will be works by Mary Maughelli, R.G. Barnes, Kristin Kessey, Rebecca Barnes, Jackie Doumanian, Joan Sharma and Nanete Maki-Dearsan.
Aiken and Doumanian are scheduled to give remarks at 6 p.m.
It will be nice to experience the Gallery 25 vibe in person again. I’m told that members are hoping in the future to bring back the physical space. (Sounds like a perfect Measure P grant application.) The exhibition runs through Sept. 28.
For more ArtHop possibilities, check out the Fresno Arts Council’s website.
By the way: September ArtHop should be interesting to observe overall after the city’s efforts to banish the street-fair component of the event to Wednesdays. (The first Why Not Wednesday event will be held Sept. 18.) I’m curious to know: Will vendors follow the rules and skip Thursday ArtHop? Will crowds still show up? Any anecdotal observations (photos of the streets outside venues, etc.) would be appreciated.
Correction 12/12/2024: An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified a work by Joy Johnson.
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