U of A museum features oft-censored work by local feminist artist

“I remember us getting phone calls to the house that were harassing,” Moira said. “She would talk about her struggles at work, how there’d be challenges at the art department and also just being taken seriously as a woman artist.”

Doogan handled the adversity with a sense of humor, Moira said, which shows up in works like “Angry Aging Bitch,” created after she received that insult from a student’s roommate.

Doogan’s art can be dark and explicit. But it also contains beauty, Moira said.

“These images of us with all of our imperfections and wrinkles and signs of a life lived, as she’d say, are beautiful, and I hope that they find that beauty in her work, the power in it, the beauty and I hope that they just find all of those things and magic,” she said.

To honor Doogan and bring attention to her work, Gloria McMillan, coordinator of the UA Campus Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and a former student of Bailey Doogan, organized a march across the UA to the museum on March 4.

McMillan, alongside local activist Manon Getsi and the Raging Grannies, a local activist theatrical group, hoped to draw attention to the feminist artist’s work and impact.

“It’s very visceral, and I think it comes from a huge place of compassion,” Getsi said of Doogan’s work. “It’s not easy having a body. I think a lot of people are very uncomfortable in their skin and their persona, and on some level she recognized that and was able to create a space for people to come out of their own shame around their forms.”

Doogan didn’t create art to be provocative, Moira said, but for reactions like Getsi’s.