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132 / The New York Art Networkby extension, that of her feminist supporters. Several years later, commentingon the predominance of gallery exhibitions of ƒgurative over abstract work,Kramer complained that museums were not showing what he believed to bethe best examples of contemporary ƒguration, such as the work of FairƒeldPorter: “Thus the Whitney, which can usually be counted on to do the wrongthing, devoted a solo exhibition to Alice Neel, whose paintings (we can be reasonablycertain) would never have been accorded that honor had they beenproduced by a man.” 21 In retrospect, the open bias and sexism of Kramer’swriting provide an unequivocally clear historical document that legitimatescontemporary feminist arguments and explains why 1970s feminists adoptedNeel as an example of courage and persistence. The in„uence and authorityof the New York Times is not easy to counter, and required the concerted effortsof a generation of women. 22As a result of their efforts, women’s art in general, and Neel’s art in particular,continued throughout the 1970s to be integrated into the artistic mainstream.In a special issue of Time devoted to “The American Woman,” onMarch 20, 1971, Robert Hughes wrote a lengthy article on contemporarywomen’s art, “Myths of Sensibility,” that substantiated the premises of Nochlin’sargument in “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” by citingstatistics that quantiƒed the poor representation of women in galleries, exhibitions,and museum collections. “At the Whitney, eight out of 129 one-artistshows in the last decade were by women,” 23 Hughes noted, using numbers nodoubt supplied by WAR. Hughes also mentioned Neel as an example of anartist who had worked in obscurity for forty years and who deserved to be creditedwith preserving “the expressionist portrait as a live art.” 24 Such articles, addressedto a broad general public, may not have convinced a Kramer, but theyhelped to garner indispensable, broad-based acceptance of the feminist cause.Art with feminist content had emerged simultaneously in Los Angeles andNew York in the late 1960s, but by 1972, arts organizations devoted to the supportof art by women had been established all over the country. According toMary D. Garrard, “The near-simultaneous explosions across the country offeminist activism in the arts . . . can only be explained by the special phenomenonof women’s networks.” These networks, she argues, were based on friendships.Prominent women artists, such as Harmony Hammond, Miriam Schapiro,and Joan Snyder, “crisscrossed the country to speak on college campusesand to women’s groups, bringing news and spreading ideas.” 25 Neel was an integralpart of this grassroots network, and in the last decade of her life therewere few cities in the United States she did not visit. Among the reasons shewas so in demand is that she could be counted on to demolish “male chauvinist”attitudes with her wit. At a WIA panel discussion on the status of women inthe arts in New York in 1972, for instance, a male member of the audience si-