The Austin Arts Hall of Fame: Chris Cowden

Curator, arts leader, co-founder of Women & Their Work

What a difference 18 years make.

Now the statewide, Austin-based artist-centered organization operates on a budget of $584,000 and hosts programs and exhibits of Texas women artists year-round in a storefront space on Lavaca Street, its third and largest home. Under Cowden's leadership, Women & Their Work has received prestigious national grants from the Andy Warhol Center Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Its Web site hosts an extensive image archive of members' work, promoting Texas women artists far beyond the borders of the Lone Star State.

Cowden is a regional representative of the National Association of Artists Organizations, the National Performance Network and has been a panelist for both the National Endowment of the Arts and the Texas Commission on the Arts. More than that, she made the concept of women in art so widely accepted, one has to wonder what artistic life was like here before 1986.
-- Jeanne Claire van Ryzin

Ernest & Sarah Butler		Barbara Carson	Felicity Coltman	Chris Cowden	Karen Kuykendall	Jim Swift	Boyd Vance