At its founding in 1966, Gemini G.E.L. was on the forefront of adventuresome American printmaking, yet, typical of many creative and business activities of that era, it was virtually a men’s club. Admittedly the co-founding men were most active in the business, however the co-founding women – Ken’s wife Kay Tyler, Sidney’s first wife Rosamund Felsen and Stanley’s wife Elyse Grinstein, all of whom helped nurture the nascent enterprise – were rarely referred to as co-founders. The printers and the artists were, with one or two exceptions, all men. Nevertheless, the glass ceiling showed some early signs of cracking: Anni Albers, perhaps as a courtesy while her husband Josef was creating his 17 White Line Squares, was invited to create three editions, and a single female lithography printer, Barbara Thomason, began her career at Gemini in 1973.

By 1981-82, Vija Celmins and Dorothea Rockburne were invited to make editions, and women began to play a truly important role in the creative life at Gemini. Celmins was instrumental in firmly establishing the introduction of etching into Gemini’s studio practice, and works like Rockburne’s Melencolia, printed on both sides of Transpagra and folded into geometric shapes, expanded the notion of traditional lithography. In 1986, the relationship with Susan Rothenberg began, and by 1992, Elizabeth Murray arrived, both of them breaking boundaries in terms of processes, scale and imagery. Ten years later, the collaborations with Ann Hamilton started; the Gemini roster was still very much male-dominated, with merely five women out of roughly thirty actively making editions during Gemini’s first 34 years, but progress was being made.

During the 1980s and 90s, female Master Printers including Chris Fox, Doris Simmelink, Krystine Graziano, Stephanie Wagner, Jennifer Turner, Minyoung Park, Amy Robinson and Maureen Staley all were being assigned important collaborations with artists, male and female. The increasing number of female printmakers in the lithography and etching studios advanced a welcoming atmosphere of community for the artists and the entire company.

At the dawn of the 21st century, Gemini’s invitations to women artists truly expanded, and since 2005, nine women have made editions with Gemini. Some, like Tacita Dean, Julie Mehretu and Analia Saban, have been the dominant presence in the studios, creating numerous projects resulting in over 110 editions. Elizabeth Murray worked at Gemini each year until her untimely death in 2007, and Ann Hamilton has continued to create prints and multiple sculptures out of an extraordinary range of materials and processes.

In a business run for nearly 58 years by men, today Gemini is managed by four women – the wife and daughters of Felsen and Grinstein. The senior manager and Master Printer of the lithography studio is a woman, Jill Lerner, and two of her three assistants are women. And today, all six projects currently underway at Gemini are by women.

A woman’s place is, indeed, in the workshop.