A portrait of Rachel Rosenthal that was taken in 1990. (photo by Steven Arnold/courtesy of the Steven Arnold Museum and Archives)

The Getty Research Institute has acquired the archive of American artist Rachel Rosenthal, which illustrates her career as a pioneer of performance and feminist art.

“One of the key figures in the development of theater, performance and feminist art in Los Angeles, Rachel Rosenthal has left an indelible mark on Southern California art and on the art of performance theater more broadly,” said Mary Miller, director of the Getty Research Institute. “Rosenthal’s archive amplifies the GRI’s collections in performance art, feminist art and the history of art in Southern California, and is a significant addition to our resources.”

The Rachel Rosenthal papers cover every phase of her career including her early years in Paris and New York, her formative time in the artistic scene surrounding Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns in the late 1940s and early 1950s, her development of the experimental theater company Instant Theatre, her awakening into the feminist movement in the 1970s and her mature performance and theater pieces.

The collection includes diaries, sketchbooks, extensive correspondence, photographs and audiovisual documentation of Rosenthal’s major projects.

“Save for the notable exception of Moira Roth’s 1997 edited volume, ‘Rachel Rosenthal,’ the artist’s career has yet to be seriously studied. Her work is richly biographical and her archive is a goldmine for scholarship,” said Glenn Phillips, head of modern and contemporary art at the GRI. “The Rosenthal archive presents a compelling portrait of this complex and groundbreaking artist.”

Unique unpublished materials were found in the archive, including more than 60 diaries and journals that contain comprehensive writing about Rosenthal’s life and work. Other notebooks contain membership records for Instant Theatre in the mid-1950s, as well as notes on performances.

Extensive unbound papers contain additional notes on performances, drafts of scripts and other writings. Some journals contain sketches, but there are also nearly a dozen sketchbooks that consist primarily of drawings.

“The materials in Rosenthal’s archive give us a fascinatingly detailed account of an artist’s life whose activity spans several major art centers in the 20th-century, where she could always be found at the epicenter of the artistic zeitgeist,” said Zanna Gilbert, senior research specialist at the GRI.

Rosenthal’s career will be represented alongside other singular pioneers of feminist performance such as Yvonne Rainer, Barbara T. Smith and Carolee Schneemann, as well as the recently acquired Woman’s Building archives, Gilbert said.

For information, visit getty.edu.