{{Short description|English feminist art historian (1933–2021)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} {{Use American English|date=March 2021}} {{Infobox writer | name = Moira Roth | image = MoiraRothPassportPhoto1970.jpg | caption = Roth in 1970 | birth_date = July 24, 1933 | birth_place = London, England | death_date = {{death date and age|2021|6|14|1933|07|24}} | death_place = Berkeley, California, United States | education = London School of Economics<br /> New York University<br /> University of California, Berkeley | genre = Contemporary art <br /> feminist art | awards = Women's Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award, 1997 <br /> College Arts Association's National Recognition in the Arts Award, 2006 | years_active = 1968–2021 | website = {{url |moiraroth.net}} | birth_name = Moira Shannon }}
'''Moira Roth''' (née '''Moira Shannon'''; 1933–2021) was an English-born American art historian, feminist art critic, and educator.
== Early life and education == [[File:Women Art Revolution.jpg|thumb|Roth in ''!Women Art Revolution'']] She was born as Moira Shannon on July 24, 1933, in London,<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |last=Jones |first=Amelia |date=2021-06-29 |title=Remembering Moira Roth 'a truly maverick feminist art historian' |url=https://forarthistory.org.uk/moira-roth/ |access-date=2024-05-11 |website=For Art History, Association for Art History UK |language=en-GB}}</ref> and raised in Cornwall, England. Her mother was Eve Shannon was a Canadian immigrant, who hosted Jewish refugees in London.<ref name=":1" /> When she was 17 years old she moved from England to Washington, D.C., to live with her Irish father who worked for the International Monetary Fund (IMF).<ref name=":1" />
She was educated at the London School of Economics in England, and received a B.A. degree in sociology; an M.A. degree from New York University; and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1974.<ref>{{cite web|title=Moira Roth|url=https://inside.mills.edu/academics/faculty/arth/mroth/mroth_cv.php|website=Mills College|access-date=27 December 2016}}</ref>
==Career== She was a Trefethen Professor of Art History at Mills College in Oakland, California from 1985 to 2017. She taught at the University of California, San Diego from 1974 to 1985.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |date=June 25, 2021 |title=Moira Roth (1933–2021) |url=https://www.artforum.com/news/moira-roth-1933-2021-86151 |access-date=2021-06-25 |website=Artforum |language=en-US |issn=0004-3532}}</ref>
She editing ''The Amazing Decade: Women and Performance Art in America 1970-1980, A Source Book'', published by Astro Artz (1983). Her collection of essays, ''Difference/Indifference: Musings on Postmodernism, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage'', was published, with a commentary by Jonathan D. Katz, by Psychology Press (1998), exploring the construction of masculinity and conflicting identities.
She appears in Lynn Hershman Leeson's 2010 documentary film ''!Women Art Revolution''.<ref>{{Cite web |author=Anon |year=2018 |title=Artist, Curator & Critic Interviews |url=https://exhibits.stanford.edu/women-art-revolution/feature/artist-curator-critic-interviews |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180326230847/https://exhibits.stanford.edu/women-art-revolution/feature/artist-curator-critic-interviews |archive-date=March 26, 2018 |access-date=Aug 23, 2018 |work=!Women Art Revolution - Spotlight at Stanford |language=en |df=mdy-all}}</ref> Roth was interviewed for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art Elizabeth Murray Oral History project.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |last=Katz |first=Jonathan D. |date=2021-06-29 |title=In Memory of Moira Roth |url=https://www.collegeart.org/news/2021/06/29/in-memory-of-moira-roth/ |access-date=2024-05-11 |website=CAA News, College Art Association |language=en}}</ref>
==Death== Roth died at the age of 87 on June 14, 2021, in Berkeley, California.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":2" />
==Awards and honors== She received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women's Caucus for Art in 1997, and the National Recognition in the Arts Award from the College Art Association in 2006.<ref>{{cite web|title=MILLS COLLEGE PROFESSOR MOIRA ROTH RECEIVES NATIONAL ARTS AWARD|url=https://www.mills.edu/academics/faculty/arth/mroth/mroth.php|website=Mills College Newsroom|publisher=Mills College|access-date=27 December 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=2006 CWA Annual Recognition Awards|url=http://www.collegeart.org/awards/cwa2006|publisher=College Arts Association|access-date=27 December 2016}}</ref>
==Publications== ===Books=== * Roth authored and edited numerous books, including writing the introduction and texts (together with commentary by Jonathan D. Katz), ''Difference/Indifference: Musings on Postmodernism, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage'', 1998 in Critical Voices in Art, Theory and Culture Series, Amsterdam, Holland: Gordon and Breach Publishing Group, 1998<ref>{{cite book|last1=Roth|first1=Moira|last2=Katz|first2=Jonathan D.|title=Difference / Indifference: Musings on Postmodernism, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage|date=2014|publisher=Rutledge|location=London|isbn=9781135221843|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P9FQAwAAQBAJ&q=Difference%2FIndifference%3A+Musings+on+Postmodernism%2C+Marcel+Duchamp+and+John+Cage%2C+1998.+In+Critical+Voices+in+Art%2C+Theory+and+Culture+Series%2C+Amsterdam%2C+Holland%3A+Gordon+and+Breach+Publishing+Group%2C+1998&pg=PR4|access-date=27 December 2016}}</ref> * She edited the following books, ''Rachel Rosenthal'', Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1997<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Balcalzo |first1=Dan |date=1999 |title=Book Reviews |journal=Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory |volume=10 |issue=1–2 |pages=291–313 |doi=10.1080/07407709908571307 |hdl-access=free |hdl=10468/10396}}</ref> and ''Abraham's Daughter: The Life and Times of Rose Hacker'', London: Deptford Forum Publishing Ltd., 1996 * She edited and wrote the introduction for, ''We Flew Over the Bridge; the Memoirs of Faith Ringgold'', Little Brown, November 1995 (reprinted in 2005, Duke University Press)<ref>{{cite web|title=Moira Roth Talks About Faith Ringgold: Friend, Fellow Traveler, and Colleague|url=http://www.sonomacounty.com/sonoma-events/moira-roth-talks-about-faith-ringgold-friend-fellow-traveler-and-colleague|publisher=Art Museum of Sonoma County|access-date=27 December 2016}}</ref> and edited and contributed to ''Connecting Conversations: Interviews with 28 Bay Area Women Artists'', Eucalyptus Press, Mills College, 1988<ref>{{cite web|last1=Roth|first1=Moira|title=Connecting Conversations: Interviews with 28 Bay Area Women Artists|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vCVKAQAAIAAJ|website=Google Books|publisher=Eucalyptus Press, Mills College|access-date=27 December 2016|year=1988}}</ref> and ''The Amazing Decade: Women and Performance Art in America 1970-1980, A Source Book'', Los Angeles: Astro Artz, 1983.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Roth|first1=Moira|title=The amazing decade: women and performance art in America, 1970-1980 : women and performance art in America 1970-1980|oclc=709813425}}</ref>
===Articles=== * “Interview with Suzanne Lacy” (abridged by Laura Meyers from the unpublished 1990 interview by Roth with Lacy, Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Washington DC), Entering the Picture: Judy Chicago, the Fresno Feminist Art Program, and the Collective Visions of Women Artists (ed. Jill Fields), New York: Routledge, 2012 * “Villa’s Word in Collision: A Study in Four Part, 1976-2007,” Carlos Villa and the Integrity of Spaces (ed. Theodore S. Gonzalez), San Francisco: Meritage Press, 2011 * Introduction, “Martha Wilson: A Woman With a Mind of Her Own,” Martha Wilson Sourcebook: 40 Years of Reconsidering Performance, Feminism, Alternative Spaces (ed. Martha Wilson), New York: Independent Curators International, 2011 * “Suzanne Lacy: Three Decades of Performing and Writing/Writing and Performing,” in Leaving Art: Suzanne Lacy's Writings on Performance, Politics and Publics, Durham, North Carolina and London: Duke University Press, 2010, pp.xvii-x1i * “Allan Kaprow’s Tree, a Happening,” Archives of American Art Journal, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC., Spring 2008 * “Women’s Rights and History, 1910-2008,” in Ginger Wolfe-Suarez: As Long As I live You Will Live, Mills College Art Museum Catalog, 2008 (5 pages) * “An Interview with John Baldessari (1973),” edited by Naomi Sawelson-Gorse, X-tra, vol. 8, no. 2, 2005, pp. 14–35 * “An Interview with John Cage (1971),” edited by Naomi Sawelson-Gorse, in Etant donné, Paris, No. 6, Fall 2005 (bilingual issue on John Cage and Marcel Duchamp), pp. 136–161 * "Faith Ringgold: Putting Jones Road on the Map," Nka, Journal of Contemporary African Art, #13/14, Spring/Summer 2001. [Part 7 of Traveling Companions/ Fractured Worlds] * “Suzanne Lacy, Between Aesthetics and Politics” (and an interview), Flintridge Foundation Awards for Visual Artists, 1991–2000, edited by Noriko Gambin and Karen Jacobson, Pasadena: Flintridge Foundation, 2000 * "Of Self and History: Exchanges with Linda Nochlin" Art Journal, Fall 2000, reprinted in Aruna d'Souza, ed., Of Self and History, In Honor of Linda Nochlin, Thames and Hudson 2001. [Part 5 of Traveling Companions/Fractured Worlds] * "The Aesthetic of Indifference," Artforum, November, 1977. Reprinted (with postscript) in And (English publication), Fall 1990. Reprinted in Dancing Around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg, and Duchamp, edited by Carlos Basualdo and Erica F. Battle, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2012.
== Filmography == * ''!Women Art Revolution'' (2010) directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson
==References== {{reflist}}
== External links == * [https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-moira-roth-15938 Oral history interview with Moira Roth, 2011 April 22–24], Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution * {{Cite web | author = Anon | year = 2018 | url = https://exhibits.stanford.edu/women-art-revolution/feature/artist-curator-critic-interviews | title = Artist, Curator & Critic Interviews | work = !Women Art Revolution - Spotlight at Stanford | access-date = Aug 23, 2018 | language = en | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180326230847/https://exhibits.stanford.edu/women-art-revolution/feature/artist-curator-critic-interviews | archive-date = March 26, 2018 | url-status=live | df = mdy-all }}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Roth, Moira}} Category:1933 births Category:2021 deaths Category:Historians from London Category:English art historians Category:British women art historians Category:American feminist writers Category:Alumni of the London School of Economics Category:Mills College faculty Category:New York University alumni Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:Performance art Category:English feminist writers Category:University of California, San Diego faculty