Emily Kopp

Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Thesis - Restricted Access (SIA Only) - With Distinction

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Art Business

First Advisor

Leo Krakowsky

Second Advisor

Judith Prowda

Abstract

The Light and Space movement, which emerged in Southern California during the 1960s, is celebrated for its explorations of perception, light, and environment through industrial materials and immersive experience. Yet its history has been overwhelmingly framed around male figures such as Robert Irwin, Peter Alexander, James Turrell, Larry Bell, Dan Flavin, and Doug Wheeler, leaving the contributions of women at the margins of critical and institutional recognition. Mary Corse, Helen Pashgian, Ann Veronica Janssens, and Lita Albuquerque, for instance, each advanced the movement in vital ways since its start: Corse’s shimmering microbead paintings, Pashgian’s enigmatic acrylic forms, Janssens’s destabilizing light and fog environments, and Albuquerque’s celestial interventions––each expanding the perceptual and conceptual boundaries of the movement.  The delayed acknowledgement of these women artists underscores persistent gender disparities in gallery and museum exhibitions, market valuations, and even art historical writing. To foreground their work is not only to restore overlooked voices, but to reframe the Light and Space movement as a more complex and inclusive history. In tracing these artists’ trajectories, the movement itself appears differently––less as a singular story of Southern California minimalism than as a constellation of refracted legacies shaping the canon of postwar American art.

Distinction

1

Download

Share

COinS