Gem to Gem: Episode 3

We're honored to present Chris Cowden, Executive Director of Women & Their Work from 1986 to the present in conversation with Dana Friis-Hansen, Executive Director from 2002-2011 and Chief Curator from 1999-2002 of the Austin Museum of Art (now The Contemporary Austin) for our third episode of Gem to Gem.

About Women & Their Work

Women & Their Work was founded by artists Rita Starpattern, Deanna Stevenson, and Carol Taylor when they organized Texas's first statewide festival celebrating women artists in the fall of 1977. The following year, they officially incorporated as a non-profit. Women & Their Work’s history and contribution is so notable that in 2020, the Smithsonian Institution acquired all forty-two years of their archive (1978-2020) in 2021 and in 2024, The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired the full 167 exhibition catalog collection including the series of solo exhibition catalogs which Women & Their Work began to publish in 1997, when they received a major grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation to support their publication production. Updating this elegant collection will remain ongoing.

Thanks to an original member of Women & Their Work's Exhibition Committee, Melissa Miller, we can share this wonderful origin story documenting Women & Their Work: The Beginning.

Here’s a sample of impressive highlights:

1979 - Women & Their Work produced Woman in Sight: New Art in Texas, the first statewide juried exhibition of women artists ever held in Texas, curated by Marcia Tucker, two years after she founded the New Museum in New York.

1981 - Women & Their Work was the first organization in Texas to receive a grant from the NEA Visual Arts Program.

1987 - Women & Their Work and its production of I Am Annie Mae, an original play, was featured on NPR’s Morning Edition in a six-minute segment.

1991 - Women & Their Work joined with the Art Department and the Women’s Studies Program at UT to present the Guerrilla Girls Conscience of the Art World.

1993 - Women & Their Work got national ink both in Art in America (review of solo exhibition by Jean Behnke) and ArtForum, which reviewed Slouching Toward 2000: The Politics of Gender, curated by Lucy Lippard.

In other words. Women & Their Work has been a force to reckon with since its very beginning. Their tenacity and determination accomplished all of the above - and so much more - from the ground up, with the singular impetus to champion women artists, writers, scholars and curators.
They tapped into a formative moment within the Feminist Art Movement, brought national titans to Austin, and broke the provincial sound barrier from the margins. This resonance is profound and a demonstration of the power of DIY on a whole nother level.

In 1986, Chris Cowden took the helm as the executive director, six weeks before she gave birth to her first child and three months before Austin’s economy tanked. Forty years later, she’s still at it, with layers and layers of a survival narrative that’s not for the faint of heart. She’s an art warrior of first rank.
Very special thanks to Diane Sikes, Program Director of Women & Their Work, for her invaluable help with this Gem to Gem release.

Don't miss Red Dot, Women & Their Work’s annual barn burner fundraising event and exhibition coming up Thursday, September 17.

About Chris Cowden

Photo: Rebecca Marino

Chris Cowden is the Executive Director of Women & Their Work. Serving as the director since 1986, she has overseen the work of more than 2,000 visual and performing artists and has directed the growth of the organization which has more than tripled in size and has developed a national presence under her leadership.

Born and raised in Springfield, Missouri, she received a B.A. and a M.A. in English Literature from Southern Methodist University where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa. She taught English and writing at the University of Texas where she completed all course work for a PhD. She worked for 3 years as a Corporate Loan Officer at what is now JP Morgan Chase in New York after completing the Careers in Business Program at the University of Texas which was designed for humanities scholars.

Cowden has served on multiple panels and advisory boards including as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and as a juror for the Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship Program. She was inducted into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame in 2004.

About Dana Friis-Hansen

Photo: Will van Overbeek

Dana Friis-Hansen focuses on contemporary art and museum practices through research, writing, cultural exchanges, and travel, with an emphasis on Japan.

Before returning to Austin in 2023, he served as Director and CEO of the Grand Rapids Art Museum, 2011-2023 and Executive Director of the Austin Museum of Art (now The Contemporary Austin) from 2002-2011. His earlier curatorial positions include the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Texas; Nanjo & Associates in Tokyo, Japan; and MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Friis-Hansen is an accomplished curator, writer, and editor with dozens of exhibitions, catalogues, books, articles, and published papers to his credit, and served frequently as a guest curator, public speaker, and on many advisory boards, juries, and panels. He is a graduate of Carleton College; received a Helena Rubinstein Museum Studies Fellowship at the Whitney Independent Study Program; and attended the Getty Museum Leadership Institute.

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