7. The advance of civil rights and gender issues (middle to late 1900's)

The U.S. civil rights movement, epitomized by the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) and by Rosa Park's memorable bus ride (1955), produced legislation guaranteeing civil rights (1964). The movement and the "I Have a Dream" speech of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963) eventually stimulated a widespread change in public opinion.

Gender issues also emerged from the trauma of the 1950's and 1960's. The feminist movement began with the publication of Simone de Beauvoir's essay "The Second Sex" (1949) and Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique (1963) and matured in the 1970's. The position and role of women in society, exemplified by universal suffrage in the United States (the 19th Amendment) in 1920, was followed by the struggle for women's control of their own bodies. The possibility of control of fertility (the birth control pill, 1960) freed many women to develop their intellectual and aesthetic abilities.

Since the 1940's, women have played an increasingly important role in the fine arts. Feminist art of the 1970's evolved into a powerful widespread movement in which women artists began to be represented in galleries and museums, and women scholars, critics, and teachers created a new "canon" of masterpieces. The antidiscrimination legislation of the civil rights movement also helped the gay community. In the 1990's, gays began to receive some measure of recognition and acceptance.

 

Marilyn Stokstad is the Judith Harris Murphy Distinguished Professor of Art History at the University of Kansas. For her Top 10 list, Stokstad selects broad cultural movements of global significance seen in the light of the American experience. She generally notes a few specific events that triggered or characterized the larger issue or movement. She also expresses the impact on art either by a general movement or by a specific work of art.

1.

Science and technology get human beings to the moon (July 20, 1969)
2. Medical research produces "miracle" drugs (middle to late 1900's)
3. The breakup of the old social order (early 1900's)
4.

Private versus state patronage of the arts (throughout the 1900's)
5. The consumer society embraces the machine-made object (throughout the 1900's)
6. Advances in communication and transportation create the "global village" (throughout the 1900's)
7. The advance of civil rights and gender issues (middle to late 1900's)
8. The rise of ethnic nationalism (middle to late 1900's)
9. Totalitarian states attempt to control artists (throughout the 1900's)
10. Dropping the atomic bomb during World War II (1945)