Hera Gallery Oral History Project (Mss. Gr. 64)

Historical Information

The Hera Oral History Project was spearheaded by Dr. Valerie Quinney of the History Department of the University of Rhode Island in the summer of 1988.

The Hera Gallery was founded in 1974 in Wakefield, Rhode Island as a small non-profit arts organization to serve as a venue for women artists, who were often under-represented at the time in commercial galleries. The founding of the gallery in the early mid-1970s, however, was also viewed as a political statement that reflected the feminist social movement of the time. Even the name, Hera, which comes from the Greek, refers to a wife who makes things uncomfortable, can be seen as a reflection of the feminist movement among the woman artists of South County.

For the founding members of the Hera Gallery, however, the gallery was meant to be a safe place to gather and create art. The difficulty women artists faced when searching for a sponsoring gallery, the lack of training in commercial art for women, and their treatment in the art world contributed to the feeling among women artists living in South County that they needed a cooperative art gallery in which to display their work. The gallery also served as a place where its members could engage in conscious-raising as a group, organize poetry readings and conduct classes in different art forms, such as printmaking.