Nancy Azara, Sculptor Who Created a Haven for Feminist Artists, Dies at 84

Nancy Azara, a sculptor who evoked ancient feminine imagery in her carved and painted wood pieces, and who in 1979 was a founder of the New York Feminist Art Institute, a school run by and for women artists, died on June 27 in Manhattan. She was 84.

Her wife, Darla Bjork, a psychiatrist and artist, said the cause of her death, in a hospital, was congestive heart failure and complications of scleroderma, a rare autoimmune disease.

In the heyday of the women’s movement — and of feminist consciousness-raising — in the early 1970s, Ms. Azara and other feminist artists began meeting in their downtown Manhattan lofts, to explore their approach to art making and to sketch out projects that would support women artists like themselves, who were largely shut out of the contemporary (and very male) art world.

On the West Coast, Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro had created a women’s art program at the California Institute of the Arts, out of which they formed a collective called Womanhouse and presented a groundbreaking exhibition in an abandoned Hollywood mansion. Inspired by its success, Ms. Azara and Ms. Schapiro, who had returned to the East Coast, began to conceive of an independent school at which art would be taught to women, by women.

The institute began with great fanfare. Ronnie Eldridge, the feminist activist and politician who had worked for Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York, helped them to secure a space in the Port Authority building on Spring Street. The advisory board included, among others, the artists Louise Nevelson and Faith Ringgold; the feminist author Kate Millett; the art historian Linda Nochlin; and the activist Gloria Steinem. At a fund-raising gala in the spring of 1979 at the World Trade Center, Ms. Nevelson was the guest of honor, introduced by Carol Bellamy, who was then the City Council president.