The year is 1971. In London, Robert Morris’s Tate show, Bodyspacemotionthings closes after four days because viewers, encouraged to climb over its adventure playground-style structure, have become too boisterous. In New York, the Whitney Museum faces a huge backlash for appointing a white curator for its Contemporary Black Artists in America exhibition. Meanwhile, Linda Nochlin’s essay Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists is published to the delight of campaigning feminists everywhere. She argues not that women artists aren’t great, but that their greatness has been overshadowed and ignored by a canon comprised almost entirely of men. Its publication is a watershed moment, one that shakes the lofty and complacent art world to its core. Read more