Joan Arbeiter Papers

Joan Arbeiter is a feminist and multimedia visual artist. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York before moving to New Jersey as an adult. She attended Douglass College for three years and received a BA from Brooklyn College. In 1962 she moved from Brooklyn to New Jersey with her husband, where they had two children. In the early 1970s, Arbeiter attended duCret School of the Arts as well as Montclair State University for graduate school. In the mid-1970s, she began showing exhibits before going on to earn her MFA from Pratt Institute in 1981. In 1979, Arbeiter became an intern at the New York Feminist Art Institute (NYFAI) as part of earning her MFA from Pratt. While an intern at the NYFAI, Arbeiter expanded the NYFAI database to include more women artists from New Jersey, based on a list made with librarian Lynn Miller.

Arbeiter has been involved with the feminist art world of New York and New Jersey since the 1970s. She has worked with the College Art Association (CAA), the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA), and the Ceres Gallery since the early 1980s, and has been a member of ArtTable since 2003. Arbeiter was part of the inaugural exhibit of Ceres Gallery, a feminist New York City based gallery that grew out of the New York Feminist Art Institute.

Arbeiter has had a number of significant art exhibitions, including “CAA Job Search Documentation,” “Age as a Work of Art” (also referred to as “Aging Faces/Facing Aging”), “Street People: Portraits,” “Lives & Works: Talks With ‘Women Artists,’” “Portrait of an Artist as a Young Girl,” and more.

In the mid-1980s, her exhibit, “CAA Job Search Documentation,” showed at both the Ceres Gallery and Columbia University. This exhibit grew out of Arbeiter’s frustrations during a two-year long, highly competitive job search. She had been searching for a job as a college professor, but the jobs were highly coveted positions, some with around 700 applicants for a single job. During this job search, Arbeiter received 70 rejection letters, and from these rejection letters, along with a variety of materials that centered around this grueling job search process, created an installation highlighting the contrast between her qualifications as a professional and the vast amount of rejection received regardless. This installation had strong political overtones, intending to shine a light on the reduced emphasis on the arts as well as a critique of how few women faculty were receiving tenure.

“Age as a Work of Art” and “Street People” featured communities and individuals who are on the outskirts of representation in culture, the elderly and the homeless population respectively. The works in these exhibitions were intended to put faces to and find dignity in those in these communities, connecting the audience with the humanity found within.

Arbeiter co-authored the book, Lives and Works: Talks With Women Artists, vol 2. The creation of this book inspired a portrait series of the artists featured in the book. In the portrait series, “Lives and Works: Women Artists,” Arbeiter created portraits of the women she had interviewed, incorporating aspects of the artist in the portrait. For example, there is fabric from Miriam Schapiro’s fabric collection in the portrait of Schapiro created by Arbeiter. Arbeiter then had the subject of each portrait write something directly on the portrait. The subjects were encouraged to write “a brief observation about life, art, and or feminism.” When on exhibit, these pieces were paired with quotes from the book, Lives and Works. This served as a reflection of women artists and the feminist art movement from the 1970s through the 1990s.

Arbeiter has also been involved in art education. She was an instructor at the duCret School of Art in Plainfield, New Jersey, and was the director of the Joan Arbeiter Studio School from 1976-1988.