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138 / The New York Art Networktrait as a respectable ƒeld of specialization . . . In the ƒeld of portraiture, womenhave been active among the subverters of the natural laws of modernism. Thishardly seems accidental: women have, after all, been encouraged, if not coercedinto making responsiveness to the moods, attentiveness to the character traits . . .of others into a lifetime’s occupation . . . in no other case is the role of the artist asmediator rather than dictator or inventor so literally accentuated by the actual situationin which the art work comes into being. 48Nochlin’s essay exempliƒes the strengths of feminist art history in the early1970s. By rejecting the dominant art historical bias against both realist art andart by women, Nochlin demonstrated that Neel was working within an alternative,if uncharted, tradition within modernism. 49The year of the national bicentennial celebration, 1976, was an especiallyactive one for Neel, and exempliƒes the frenetic schedule she maintained duringthis decade. As the following list makes clear, the momentum of her careerwas fueled to a great extent by the women’s movement. The year culminatedin the opening of the landmark exhibition “Women Artists, 1550–1950” at theLos Angeles County Museum of Art in December. Organized by Linda Nochlinand Ann Sutherland Harris, it was the ƒrst museum survey of women’s art,and its catalog offered an initial exploration of an alternative history of art.Neel entered the historical tradition of women’s art with T. B. Harlem. Theyear began with the opening of her Graham gallery exhibit on January 31;Linda Nochlin and Daisy was reproduced on the announcement, perhaps as apreview of the Los Angeles show. On January 25, she was elected a member ofthe National Institute of Arts and Letters, as was Meyer Schapiro. 50 In Februaryshe was given a two-person exhibition with Sylvia Sleigh at A.I.R. gallery,which was reviewed by David Bourdon in the Village Voice. In March, she wasincluded in the Studs Terkel PBS documentary on the WPA. That same month,she had an exhibition at the Old Mill Gallery in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, runby Geza De Vegh, who had in 1957 restored some of the paintings slashed byKenneth Doolittle; from March 31 to April 16, she had a one-person exhibitionat Beaver College, where she again met her chum from the PhiladelphiaSchool of Design, Rhoda Medary, who ran the art store there. In April shespoke at the Brookdale Community College in Vermont, as part of a feministlecture series. In July, her portrait of Jean Jadot (1976) represented one of 360religious leaders whose portraits were exhibited in the Liturgical Arts exhibitionorganized by Philadelphia Inquirer critic Victoria Donohoe and held atthe city’s Civic Center. In the fall, she was included in an exhibition of Timecover portraits organized by the USIA and shown at the American Embassy inLondon. In September, the Fendrick gallery in Washington, D.C., opened anexhibit of Gillespie/Neel/Robinson/Sleigh, which was a distant satellite to the