Katherine Millett was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She grew up with an alcoholic and abusive father, who left the family to live in poverty when she was 14. She was educated at parochial schools and later studied English literature at the University of Minnesota, graduating magna cum laude in 1956. Supported by her wealthy aunt, she furthered her education by studying at St Hilda’s College, one of the colleges of the University of Oxford in England, becoming the first woman to receive a first-class honors degree from the institute. She taught English briefly at the University of North Carolina before moving to New York City to pursue a career as an artist, supporting herself by working as a kindergarten teacher in Harlem. In 1961, at 27, Millett moved to Tokyo to study sculpture and held her first solo exhibition there. After two years, Millett returned to the US and taught English and Philosophy at Barnard College while creating art. At the time, she became involved with various women’s organizations, serving as a National Organization for Women committee member and joining the New York Radical Women and Radical Lesbians. In 1970, She began her writing career by contributing pieces to the anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women’s Liberation Movement. That same year, she published her Ph.D. dissertation as a book titled Sexual Politics. In this groundbreaking work, Millett used sociology and anthropology tools to define the goals and strategies of the women’s liberation movement. Although it cost her the teaching position in Bernard, the book became the movement’s manifesto, making her a prominent figure and the voice of the second wave of feminism in the US. The following year, Millett founded the self-supporting women’s artist colony, Women’s Art Colony and Tree Farm in Poughkeepsie, New York, later renamed the Millett Center for the Arts. In her second book, The Prostitution Papers (1971), Millett discussed the inherent relationship between prostitution and patriarchy and compared it to marriage contracts. Her following two books, published in 1974 and 1977, were autobiographies in which she explored her sexuality and role as a public figure. In the following decades, Millett continued to write and explore various aspects of feminism through writing and art. Throughout her life, she published ten books and exhibited her artwork in dozens of venues worldwide. She died of cardiac arrest several days before her 83rd birthday. Read more...

Born Edith Newbold Jones in New York City into a wealthy and socialite family. From 4 to 10, she traveled with her family throughout Europe, was educated by governesses and private tutors, and became fluent in French, German, and Italian. After returning to the US, she used her father’s library to further her knowledge. From an early age, she wrote fiction and poetry, and at 11, she tried to complete her first novel. At 15, she published her first work under a pseudonym, a translation of a German poem. That same year, she wrote her first novella, Fast and Loose. The following year, she published her first poetry collection, titled Verses. She continued to publish her poems in various newspapers and magazines. At 17, after coming out as a debutante to society, she stopped publishing for almost a decade, dedicating her time to the social events of the upper class, which she later used as inspiration for her work. At 23, she married Edward Robbins Wharton. The couple settled in Newport, RI, and took annual vacations in Europe, mainly in Italy, which was her favorite. At the time, she returned to writing, combining it with her love to design; in 1897, she co-authored the design and architecture book The Decoration of Houses. In 1889, at 27, Wharton published the poem The Last Giustiniani, followed by the short story Mrs. Manstey’s View. In 1902, the Whartons bought The Mount estate in Lenox, MA, where she designed its interior and gardens. There, with the right setting, she wrote some of her best-known works, including the best-seller The House of Mirth in 1905 and Ethan Frome in 1911. In her writing, she used the physical space of the house to mirror the relationship between its inhabitants and their emotions. She dealt with topics such as individual and social fulfillment, the desire for freedom, old money vs. new money, and repressed sexuality, criticizing the mannerisms of the golden-age high society and reviling its hypocrisies. At the time, Wharton and her husband’s relationship disintegrated, and they divorced in 1913. Afterward, she moved permanently to France. When WWI broke out, Wharton founded several humanitarian organizations, established hostels for refugees, living facilities for tuberculosis sufferers, workshops for unemployed seamstresses, and schools for refugee children. In 1916, amid the war, she received the French Legion of Honor for her charitable work. She also contributed her writing skills by publishing testimonies from the French frontline. The war did not prevent Wharton from writing original materials, and between 1914-1918, she published two novels, two short story collections, and a non-fictional book titled Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort. In 1920, Wharton published her most famous work, the novel The Age of Innocence, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, becoming the first woman to win the award. Throughout her life, Wharton published over 50 books, including 18 novels, 7 novellas, 85 short stories, 3 poetry collections, an autobiography, and a dozen books on travel and design. She died of a stroke at the age of 75. Read more...

Chien-Shiung Wu was born in Liuhe, China. Her parents supported her curiosity and interests and believed in equal education for all their children, regardless of gender. She first studied at Ming De School, a girls’ school her father had founded, and at 10, she went to a women’s boarding school that included a teacher training program. This school’s curriculum allowed her to cultivate her growing passion for science. At the time, government regulations ruled that teacher-training college students must serve as schoolteachers for one year before continuing to academic studies. So, she taught at a public school in Shanghai, administrated by the famous philosopher Hu Shih, who became her mentor and father figure. During her free time, she taught herself mathematics, and in 1930, she enrolled at the National Central University in Nanjing, studying mathematics and later switching to physics. After graduating, she worked as an assistant at Zhejiang University and as a researcher at the Institute of Physics of the Academia Sinica. In 1936, at 24, she was accepted to the University of Michigan and moved to the US. Upon her arrival, she discovered that the institute was highly discriminating against women, denying them access via the front entrance. Wu decided to study at a more liberal university and enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley. An exceptional student, she was chosen by the famous Italian physicist Emilio Segrè to work with him in his beta decay studies that later significantly contributed to the development of nuclear bombs. In 1940, Wu completed her Ph.D. and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa but didn’t get a faculty position. She remained at Berkeley as a post-doctoral fellow at the Radiation Laboratory for two years. In 1942, at 30, she married fellow physicist Luke Chia-Liu Yuan. The couple moved to the East Coast, where she worked as an assistant professor and later associate professor at Smith College. In 1944, she accepted a position at Princeton University, becoming the first female faculty member of its Physics Department. That same year, she joined the research team of the Manhattan Project, which worked on the atomic bomb development. Based on her Ph.D. dissertation, Wu helped to determine the separation process of uranium into U-235 and U-238 isotopes by gaseous diffusion and by that to improve the Geiger counters for the detection of radiation and the enrichment of uranium in large quantities. After WW2, Wu remained at Columbia University, becoming the first woman to serve as a tenured physics professor at Columbia. In 1956, physicists Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang asked her to conduct an experiment proving that the conservation of parity did not apply during beta decay. Though referred to as the “Wu experiment,” she didn’t receive any recognition when Chen and Yang received a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957 for this theory. In the next three decades until her retirement in 1981, she worked on many theories that often crossed over to other scientific fields, including research on the molecular changes in red blood cells that cause sickle-cell anemia, research on magnetism, and Bell’s theorem, in which she confirmed the interpretation of quantum mechanics. In 1975, at 63, she became the first woman to serve as president of the American Physical Society and the first woman to be awarded the National Medal of Science in Physics. In her later years, Wu renewed her activism and became an advocate for various fights and causes. She protested against the imprisonment of the in-laws of physicist Kerson Huang and the journalist Lei Chen in Taiwan, which with her help, was eventually released. She spoke against gender discrimination, especially in the academic world, and promoted teaching STEM subjects to all students, regardless of gender, race, or background. She died following a stroke at the age of 85. Per her wish, her ashes were buried in the courtyard of the Ming De School. Read more...

Barbara Jill Walters was born and raised in Boston, the third generation of a Jewish immigrant family. She was the youngest of three children. Her brother died as a toddler, and her sister had mental disabilities. Still, Walters said she was one of the most significant people in her life, making her compassionate, empathic, and ambitious. Her father, Louis “Lou,” was in entertainment and show business. He ran nightclubs, produced on Broadway, and was a booking agent. The family moved from Boston to Miami Beach and then to New York City following his business, so Walters changed schools every several years, but growing up surrounded by celebrities and talents helped her feel comfortable and natural around them and create intimacy during interviews. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in New York in 1953, Walters went to speed writing school and finished at the top of her class. A skill she used extensively throughout her career. The local NBC station hired her as the assistant due to her connection as Lou Walter’s daughter and her speed typing skills. She started writing stories about fashion, beauty, and other subjects she nicknamed the “tea pourers.” The managers admired her writing skills, and in 1961 Walters joined the panel team of NBC’s The Today Show. Soon she became the regular Today Girl and was sent to cover stories, receiving more and more airtime. Her breakthrough occurred when the network temporarily hired her to cover a convention. The temporary assignment lasted for 13 years. Since the conception in those days was that people could not hear the hard news from a woman, her college Frank McGee asked the hard questions, while Walters was allowed to do remote interviews and ask a question only after McGee asked four questions. When McGee passed away in 1974, Walters officially became the co-host of the Today show. The first female co-host of a news program in the United States. In 1976 ABC signed Walters on a 5-year $5 million contract, making her the highest-paid news anchor. She co-anchored ABC Evening News from 1976 to 1978, the first US female network news anchor. From 1984 till her retirement, she co-hosted ABC newsmagazine 20/20. Walters appeared in ABC specials, covering events like the Oscar lineups and presidential inaugurations. She became famous for her Barbara Walters Specials interview program, interviewing celebrities, sports icons, world leaders, and royalties, including the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and his wife, Empress Farah Pahlavi, and Cuba’s leader Fidel Castro. From 1997 until her retirement in 2014, Walters co-hosted, co-created, and co-produced the daytime talk show The View. In the show, women of different generations, backgrounds, and viewpoints discussed current events. Other networks copied the concept. Her last on-air interview was in December 2015, and she made her final public appearance in 2016. After she paved the way for women in television and inspired many to join the field, Walters passed away in her home in Manhattan in 2022 after suffering from Alzheimer’s in recent years. Read more...

Mary Violet Leontyne Price was born in Laurel, Mississippi. From an early age, she showed musical talent. At the age of four, she already played the piano, and growing up, she sang with the choir of her community church. At the age of 9, she went on a school trip to listen to Marian Anderson sing. The experience inspired her to pursue a professional music career. She attended Oak Park Vocational High School, where she stood out as a pianist and a member of the glee club, and in her free time, she earned extra money by singing at funerals and community events. After graduation, Price studied music education at the College of Education and Industrial Arts in Wilberforce, Ohio, but later changed to voice studies following the advice of the university president. In 1948, at 21, she moved to NYC and joined the studio of Florence Page Kimball at Juilliard. Her lyric soprano voice gained her many leading roles in school opera productions. Her performance as Alice Ford in Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff caught the attention of the composer Virgil Thomson, who cast her as St. Cecilia in his all-black production of Four Saints in Three Acts, and in 1952, 25 years old Price made her Broadway debut. Only a few weeks later, she sang the opening performance as Bess in George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, for which she received acclaim for both her flawless vocal and her interpretation of the role. Before the show embarked on a European tour, Price married her Porgy, the opera singer William Warfield. The couple divorced in 1973. Even though her voice was praised, she had limited opportunities in formal opera houses as a Black singer, and she mostly performed in duo concerts with her husband. In 1954, she made her recital debut at NYC’s Town Hall, and afterward, she went on a tour across North America as part of the Columbia Artists roster. Price made her TV debut as Floria in NBC’s televised production of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca the following year. Afterward, she starred in three more NBC Opera broadcasts, singing the roles of Pamina in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Madame Lidoine in Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites, and Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. In 1957, at 30, Price performed Verdi’s Aida, which became her signature role. That same year, she finally had her opera stage debut at the San Francisco Opera as Madame Lidoine in Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des carmélites. Her performance made her famous, and she received invitations from the best opera houses and venues in Europe. In 1961, at 34, she made her debut performance at the Metropolitan Opera House as Leonora in Il Trovatore. It was the beginning of her residency as a prima donna at the prestigious establishment, and during the coming decades, she sang a series of leading roles, such as Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Minnie in La Fanciulla del West, Liu in Turandot, and Cleopatra in r Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra, a role that was written especially for her. Price became the first African-American prima donna to receive an international reputation, opening the opera season and a box-office sell-out. She was featured on the cover of Time magazine and was paid the highest fee for a woman vocalist. Because of her extraordinary talent, the Met included her in their national tour, which included the segregated South, and in 1964, after a two-year boycott of segregated houses, Price became the first African-American to sing in the Deep South. By 1970, Price had reduced her operatic performances, and in the next two decades, she focused on recitals and concerts both in the US and abroad. In 1985, after 21 seasons with the Met, 16 roles, and 201 performances, she made her operatic farewell in her most recognized role of Aida, for which she received 25 minutes of a standing ovation. She continued performing in recitals that included operatic arias, French melodies, and spirituals. She also gave masterclasses at Juilliard and other schools and recorded numerous award-winning albums. In 1997, at the age of 70, Price officially retired from the stage, but four years later, she made one last performance in a memorial concert for the victims of the September 11 attacks, singing her favorite spiritual, This Little Light of Mine. Read more...

Debra Janine Thomas was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, and grew up in San Jose, California. She began skating at the age of five, and at the age of nine, she participated in her first competition, winning first place. It encouraged her to enter competitive skating and take formal lessons. She signed on with coach Alex McGowan, who trained until her retirement. As a black girl in a white-dominated sport, Thomas often encountered discrimination, and judges favored the white contestants and gave better scores to her less-skilled competitors. That has not prevented her from skating, and at the age of 12, she won the silver medal at the national novice finals. Her career took off four years later when she was selected as the Los Angeles Figure Skating Club’s representative. While most professional athletes do not attend college or take a gap year, Thomas continued her training and began her academic education as an engineering student at Stanford University. In her freshman year, 18 years old Thomas won the US national title, becoming the first black skater to hold a national title in ladies’ singles figure skating. This year, she also won first place at the World Championships. In recognition of her achievements, she received the ABC’s Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year award of 1986. Despite suffering an Achilles tendinitis in both of her ankles, Thomas reached second place in the 1987 US Nationals and reclaimed her champion title the following year. At 21, Thomas competed in the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada, winning the bronze medal and making history as the first black athlete medalist at this competition. After the Olympics, she added another World Championship to her record before retiring from amateur skating to focus on her studies. She continued to skate as a performer for Stars on Ice and won the World Professional Championships three times. In 1991, at 24, after receiving her bachelor’s degree, she retired from skating to further her education at Northwestern University Medical School. Afterward, she specialized in orthopedic surgery and completed her residency at Charles R. Drew University. After a one-year fellowship at Centinela Hospital’s Dorr Arthritis Institute in Inglewood, Thomas worked at Carle Clinic in Urbana, Illinois, and in 2010 she opened her own practice in Richlands, Virginia. In 2012, she had a psychiatric attack and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Then, her private practice failed, she got divorced, lost custody of her son, and declared bankruptcy. She had to close her practice and sell her Olympic medal to cover some of her debt. In recent years she has been living with her partner in Virginia. In her short six years as a competitive figure skater, Thomas has changed the face of the sport by breaking stereotypes and promoting racial equality. Read more...

Ella Josephine Baker was born in Norfolk, Virginia. At the age of seven, following a race riot in which black shipyard workers were beaten, her mother took the family to her hometown, Littleton, North Carolina, and her father stayed in Norfolk to continue working on a steamship. Growing up, Baker listened to her maternal grandmother’s stories about slavery, slave revolts, and women in the old days. Learning first-hand about the oppression of black people has shaped her sense of social injustice. After high school, Baker attended Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, graduating as valedictorian of her class. In 1927, at 24, she moved to NYC, where she worked as a domestic and waitress before she got a job as an editorial assistant at the Negro National News. Living in NYC during the Harlem Renaissance, Baker’s point of view evolved into actions, and she began her life-long dedication to political activism. In 1931, she became a member of the Young Negroes Cooperative League (YNCL), which formed cooperatives that provided affordable services to its members. Soon, she was appointed the national director of the YNCL. She also taught classes on consumer education, African history, and labor history as part of the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration. In 1938, Baker became active at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), first as a field secretary. Within two years, she became director of branches and the highest-ranking woman in the organization. Through this position, she put into practice her belief that social change occurs from the bottom up, and the success of an organization depends on the commitment of its members, not its leaders, emphasizing the importance of women and young people to its success. As its director, Baker traveled throughout the South to recruit new members, earning the people’s trust with her personalized approach, sleeping in their homes, and attending church services. Over time, she built a network of people who played a significant role in the struggle for civil rights in the South. In 1946, at 43, Baker took custody of her niece and left her position at the NAACP but continued to be active as a volunteer at the New York branch. There, she mainly worked on the desegregation of schools and improving the education of black children. When she was 54, she moved to Atlanta to establish and serve as the executive director of Martin Luther King’s new organization – the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Its goal was to promote nonviolent actions to achieve racial justice and social progress. First, they organized education and church ceremonies to encourage people to register to vote. The campaign was not successful as hoped for, but it laid the foundations for local activist centers. In 1960, following the Greensboro sit-ins, when black college students refused to leave a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter, Baker left the SCLC to assist the Greensboro Four. She organized a meeting at Shaw University, where she formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Under her guidance, the SNCC became one of the leading human rights organizations in the US, initiating some of the most successful nonviolent protests of the time. Including the Freedom Rides of 1961, when buses of civil rights activists rode through the segregated Southern states, and the Freedom Summer of 1964, when hundreds of volunteers arrived in Mississippi protesting against the intimidation and discrimination against registered black voters. In addition to her work with the SNCC, Baker worked with the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF), promoting social justice and interracial desegregation via the education of the southern white population. In 1964, she co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), served as its coordinator, and led its delegation to the National Democratic Party convention. At the age of 64, Baker returned to NYC, continuing her fight for social justice for two more decades. She consulted various organizations, such as the Puerto Rican Solidarity Committee, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Third World Women’s Coordinating Committee. She remained a prominent figure in the fight for human rights until her death on her 83rd birthday. Read more...

Born Mary Morris Burnett in Oberlin, Ohio. After graduating high school at 16, she attended Oberlin College, where she was the only Black student when higher education was uncommon for women of any race. In 1886, at the age of 20, she received her Bachelor of Arts degree and became a teacher at Bethel University in Little Rock, Arkansas, where she taught math, science, history, and Latin. The following year, she was appointed assistant principal of Union High School – the highest position held by a Black woman in the state. In 1891, at 25, she married William H. Talbert, and the couple moved to Buffalo, New York. There, she became an active member of the Old Michigan Avenue Baptist Church, establishing a Sunday school for teachers and founding the Christian Culture Club. Soon, she broadened her activities to promote women’s rights and equality for African-Americans and became a civic leader in her community. In 1889, Talbert co-founded the Phyllis Wheatley Club, which became the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC), and later served as its president. In 1901, she established a literary society and forum called the Christian Culture Congress. That year, she led a campaign against the exclusion of Black people from the Pan-American Exposition Planning Commission. It resulted in the addition of the Negro Exhibit that highlighted the economic and cultural achievements of African-Americans. In 1905, Talbert hosted a secret meeting of 30 black activists, among them John Hope and W.E.B DuBois, in which they founded the Niagara Movement. Though short-lived, it was the forerunner to the National Association of Advancement for Colored People (NAACP), founded four years later. Throughout the years, Talbert held various positions in the NAACP. She co-founded its chapters in New York, Louisiana, and Texas. She was a member of its board, served as its vice president, and chaired its Anti–Lynching Committee. During WW1, Talbert served as a YMCA secretary and Red Cross nurse in France. She joined the Women’s Committee of National Defense and traveled through Europe, giving lectures and selling Liberty Bonds to support the war effort. When the war had ended, she joined the Women’s Committee on International Relations to select women for various positions in the League of Nations and embarked on a lecturing tour in US and Europe, speaking on the importance of race relations and women’s rights. She believed that women of all races and classes needed to work together for women’s suffrage, and she dedicated most of her time advocating for this cause in Buffalo alongside her white counterparts. In her last years, she worked tirelessly to promote the Dyer Anti–Lynching Bill to establish lynching as a federal crime, and in 1922 she co-founded the International Council of Women of the Darker Races. She died in the following year, at 57, after dedicating three decades to promote women’s and civil rights, founding and playing significant roles in various organizations, paving the way for human rights activists to follow. Read more...

Elizabeth Gertrude Britton was born in NYC and grew up in Cuba, where her family owned a furniture factory and sugar plantation. After finishing private high school in NYC, she attended Normal College, and at 17, after receiving a degree in critic and natural sciences, she joined the school’s faculty. At 21, she joined the Torrey Botanical Club, and two years later, she published her first paper in the organization’s journal. She became fascinated with bryology – the study of mosses, and at 25, she published her first scientific work on the subject. At 27, she married Nathaniel Lord Britton, a geologist at Columbia College, and resigned from her teaching position. After the wedding, Britton took an unpaid position at Columbia as a moss collector. In addition, she got appointed the editor of the Torrey Botanical Club’s journal, where, in 1889, she published a series of papers called Contributions to American Bryology. Britton and her husband traveled through the US and the West Indies to collect botanical specimens, and she published her finding and observations in various professional magazines. In 1888, on a trip to England, the Brittons visited the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and decided to establish a comparable institute in NYC. On their return to the US, they proposed their initiative to the Torrey Botanical Club, and within two years, the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) was founded. Britton’s Knowledge of liverworts and mosses contributed to the garden’s collection, and in 1912 she was named Honorary Curator of the Mosses. In 1898, at the age of 40, Britton co-founded the Sullivant Moss Society, later renamed the American Bryological Society, and served as its president from 1916 to 1919. In the early 1900s, Britton became a loud advocate for the conservation of wildflowers. In 1902, when the Wild Flower Preservation Society of America was founded, she was appointed to the Board of Managers, and later she served as the organization’s secretary and treasurer. Devoted to the cause, Britton published papers, gave lectures, and conducted a campaign to adopt regional legislation to preserve and protect wildflowers. Thanks to her efforts, numerous endangered wildflower species were saved throughout the country, including the Wild American holly used as a Christmas decoration. Throughout her life, Britton published more than 300 scientific papers, half of them about mosses. She died at the age of 76 from an apoplectic stroke. Read more...

Yayoi Kusama was born in Matsumoto, Japan, to a family of merchants and started to paint at a young age. At the age of 10, she began hallucinating fields of dots that she later brought to life in her creations. At 13, during WW2, Kusama worked in a factory that supplied parachutes for the Japanese army. After the war, she studied Nihonga – a traditional Japanese painting style, at the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts. At the time, she developed an interest in the avant-garde. She began to experiment with abstract natural forms, and in 1952, at the age of 23, she had her first solo exhibition. Her abusive relationship with her mother and the conservative Japanese culture drove Kusama to leave Japan, and at the age of 28, she moved to the US. She settled in NYC, where her avant-garde works received praise and exhibited among the most known pop-artists of the era, such as Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg. Kusama became familiar with her obsessive repetition, as can be seen in particular in her Infinity Nets – paintings of thousands of tiny dots that covered a 30 ft-long canvas, with no regard to its edges, as if they are endless. Her work, an implementation of her hallucinations, explored the boundaries of painting and created a hypnotic sensation for the viewer. This idea was reflected in her 1965 installation of Infinity rooms, in which she lined a room with mirrored glass and covered the floor with stuffed phalli painted with red polka dots. During this period, she expressed her sexual anxiety by covering objects, such as chairs and shoes, with phallic protrusions. In 1966, Kusama participated for the first time in the Venice Biennale, in which she sold individuals mirrored spheres that she installed on the lawn until the organizers made her stop. In the following years, her artworks were public performances and protests against the Vietnam War. They often involved nudity, such as the unauthorized performance at the sculpture garden of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, where she painted polka dots on the naked participants. In 1968, she founded the Kusama Fashion Company Ltd, designing and selling avant-garde clothing. In that same year, she opened nude painting studios as well as a gay social club. Although Kusama gained fame for her art, she did not get paid for most of it, unlike the many male artists who copied her work. Her mental health declined, and she tried to commit suicide several times, been in and out of hospitals. In 1973, at the age of 44, she returned to Japan and began writing and publishing surrealistic poems, novels, and short stories. In 1977, by her own choice, she moved into a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo. She opened a studio near the hospital and continued to make art. In 1989, Kusama returned to the public eye when the Center for International Contemporary Arts in NYC presented a retrospective of her work. In the following decades, similar shows took place in various cities around the world, including Oxford, Venice, Los Angeles, Paris, and Tokyo. Throughout her life, she created hundreds of artwork from different mediums. She inspired people and challenged them not only because of her original and innovative body of work but also because of her honesty and openness about her mental health and how art can save lives as it saved hers. In her 90s, Kusama is still working, creating new pieces and revisiting her previous works. She exhibits in the biggest art institutions, and usually, the tickets are sold out in advance. Read more...