Suzanne Lacy

Suzanne Lacy (b. 1945, Wasco, California) is a pioneer of feminist performance and what she termed "new genre public art" — large-scale, socially engaged works that can involve hundreds of participants. She discovered art through Judy Chicago's Feminist Art Program in Fresno, followed it to CalArts, where she studied with Allan Kaprow, and became a central figure at the Woman's Building in Los Angeles. Her 1970s works remain landmarks of activist art: Ablutions (1972), a harrowing ritual confronting rape; Three Weeks in May (1977), which mapped every reported rape in Los Angeles across public performances, self-defense workshops, and media interventions; and In Mourning and In Rage (1977, with Leslie Labowitz), a widely televised protest performance on the steps of City Hall responding to the Hillside Strangler murders. Later works like The Crystal Quilt (1987), performed by 430 older women in Minneapolis, extended her collaborative model nationwide. Lacy has exhibited at Tate Modern, MoMA PS1, the Whitney, and SFMOMA, which co-organized her 2019 career retrospective. A prolific writer and educator, she served as dean of fine arts at California College of the Arts, founded the MFA in Public Practice at Otis College of Art and Design, and teaches at USC's Roski School of Art and Design.