A major figure in the Feminist Art Movement, Arlene Raven was an American author, critic, feminist art historian, teacher, and curator. She was an important part of an effort to educate women artists and provide them with opportunities to make and show work that was specifically about their experiences as women. In 1973, Raven co-founded the Feminist Studio Workshop with Judy Chicago and Sheila Levrant de Bretteville. The goal of the Feminist Studio Workshop, an independent art school ultimately housed in the Los Angeles Woman's Building, was to "come together as a community of working individuals whose work grows out of our shared experiences as women and our shared social context," and an emphasis was put on "cooperation, collaboration, and sisterhood." That same year, Raven co-founded The Center for Feminist Art Historical Studies with fellow Johns Hopkins-educated art historian Ruth Iskin. The Center was dedicated to serious research on women artists, developing a feminist art historical methodology, and creating a slide archive of work by women. Raven also co-founded and edited the women's culture magazine Chrysalis. She was a founding member of The Lesbian Art Project in 1976, where members questioned the cultural meaning of the term "lesbian." She was also a founder of the Women’s Caucus for Art. In addition to the Feminist Studio Workshop, Raven taught at the California Institute of the Arts, Maryland Institute College of Art, Parsons The New School for Design, UCLA, University of Southern California and The New School for Social Research. In the 1980s she became the chief art critic for the Village Voice. She authored nine books, including Feminist Art Criticism: An Anthology (1988) (editor), Crossing Over: Feminism and Art of Social Concern (1988), Art in the Public Interest (1989), New Feminist Art (1993) and curated ten exhibitions, including ones for the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Long Beach Museum of Art. In 2000, Raven became critic-in-residence at the Rinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and in 2002, she received the Frank Jewett Mather Award for art criticism from the College Art Association.