I’ve been catching up on my museum attendance in the last two weeks. First, Marina Abramovic’s tour-de-force retrospective at MoMA, which closed this past Memorial Day weekend, and proved a blockbuster for that institution—no less because the artist was indeed “present” during its run. Second, I visited Dia at its upstate satellite in Beacon, NY. Housed in a former Nabisco factory, the collection is comprised of a Who’s-Who of Minimalist and Conceptual art (read: Dead white males, for the most part). While the size of the space functions well to showcase the scale of the artwork—Richard Serra‘s massive sculptures and Dan Flavin’s light tubes, for example—and to include several pieces by each individual, it is also worth noting the lack of gender diversity of the artists. Among the few women represented are Louise Bourgeouis, Agnes Martin, Hilda Becher (who functions as an artist duo along with her husband, Bernd), and Zoe Leonard. (Needless to say, all these women are white; and there are no people of color in the collection, period.)

But I got my revisionist art history lesson from a different source by watching Joan Braderman’s The Heretics, which was recently released on DVD. The documentary is structured as a road trip through the U.S. to find and interview several of the women who put together the feminist art journal Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics. The publication—which began publishing in the late 1970s and ended in 1992—was as homegrown as you could get down to the editorial consensus and the cut-and-paste layout. Each issue was themed, with two core collective members serving as editors, and an open call for the other women who’d work on each issue, guaranteeing a diversity of point-of-views. 

As someone who studied fine art in college, it was a treat to see so many of my (s)heroes on screen, being candid and smart: Wow, it’s Lucy Lippard! Wait, there’s Ida Applebroog! And Su Friedrich! I loved hearing them reflect on a time of upheaval and idealism—of being fed up with the Old Boys Club and speaking out about their oppression as female artists.

The journal covered several themes, including labor and family. Friedrich’s anecdote of being fired when she was found photocopying the layout of the sex issue is simultaneously funny and indicative of precisely what the Heretics were denouncing. Harmony Hammond speaks of the struggle of the lesbian members of the group to claim their own place within the collective. There is little mention, however, of the lack of representation by women of color. Dedicating one issue to “third world women” appears like a token gesture, and almost as a way to disavow their absence from the rest of the magazine’s run.

Braderman is an engaging narrator and the film is gorgeously shot by Brooklyn-based Director of Photography Lily Henderson (Henderson is also a filmmaker on her own, whose short doc Lessons for the Living is fiscally-sponsored by Arts Engine). Braderman indicates the progression for women artists from the turbulent 1970s to the present by showcasing her all-female crew, as well as by interviewing the editors from the contemporary feminist journal LTTR. I get what she’s trying to do with this, but merely saying, “Look at my assistants—they’re girls!” doesn’t serve her point well.

The film is worth catching at home via DVD; or better yet, on the big screen. In New York, it will be playing at the 92YTribeca on June 3 (Braderman will be present for filmmaker Q&A) and NewFest on June 10.