Archival exhibitions are not merely the best way to understand currents in 1970s feminist art and activism, but to form an active and personal connection to them that can energize both practices in the present. Janet Sarbanes visits "The Feminist Art Program (1970-1975): Cycles of Collectivity" at REDCAT, and "Heresies: Still Ain’t Satisfied" at UCR Arts, both which pay tribute to feminist pedagogy and organizing through the art of assembling the archive.

Artists' books printed in multiples achieved deep emotional resonance when infused with the care and craft characteristic to the feminist art movement. The Women's Graphic Center, housed at the Woman's Building in Downtown Los Angeles, evolved into a dynamic ecosystem of print art experimentation, providing feminist artists the tools and community to innovatively approach the artists' books form. Writer and art librarian Sam Regal positions these works within California print history and interrogates the problematics of their reductive library classification and belated institutional embrace.

In 1976, Paul McCarthy produced 1500 copies of Criss Cross Double Cross, a tabloid-size newsprint publication that regarded the printed page as a performance space. "It was crazy to do it," said McCarthy. Among the contributors to the one-off issue were Bruce Nauman, Nancy Buchanan, and Martha Rosler.

In 1970, Suzanne Lacy was a second-year graduate student in psychology when she entered Fresno State's burgeoning Feminist Art Program. Her education, and ultimate career, charted new art territories that incorporated training in carpentry skills, consciousness raising, and an emotive feminist approach to conceptual strategies.