Alla Efimova, whose contributions have been foundational to the study of Sonya Rapoport’s art, will be presenting an online talk about her work:
House/Work: The Art of Sonya Rapoport
School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon
May 22nd, 2025
Talk will begin at 10am Western European Time, (2am Pacific Time)
Join via Zoom:
https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/99832115354?pwd=pQp3g2CQQCRyQaPaOAORO0mYEMWqcN.1
Password: 451184
In the post-WWII era of rapid university expansion, Sonya Goldberg (1923-2015) married chemistry professor Henry Rapoport. The couple moved to California, where he began his career at the University of California Berkeley. While Henry immersed himself in teaching and research, Sonya found her own path, becoming one of the first women to earn a master's degree in fine arts at the university.
Despite her academic achievements, Sonya Rapoport found herself constrained by the expectations placed upon her as a "faculty wife." The demands of maintaining a large household and raising three children limited her opportunities for artistic advancement. Although she achieved early recognition with a retrospective of her paintings at a prominent San Francisco museum in the 1960s, it was her later work that would ultimately define her legacy.
In the 1970s, Rapoport transformed the large garage behind her home into a studio space. There, she developed conceptual, psychologically complex projects that drew directly from her domestic environment. Works such as Doors of My House and Objects on My Dresser reimagined her homebound existence as rich material for pioneering feminist art. These projects applied methodological rigor to everyday surroundings with an intellectual precision that matched her husband's work in organic chemistry. Only recently has Rapoport's significant contribution to conceptual and feminist art received proper recognition through museum exhibitions and scholarly publications, highlighting how she ingeniously converted the limitations of her domestic role into pioneering artistic work.
Alla Efimova is an art historian and curator who divides her time between New York City and Lisbon. Efimova was the Director of the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at the University of California Berkeley and a curator at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive. She taught modern and contemporary art history at the University of California Santa Cruz, and San Francisco Art Institute. In 2014, Efimova founded KunstWorks, an agency focused on legacy advancement for contemporary artists and artists' estates, including the artist’s estate of Sonya Rapoport, the subject of Efimova’s research, exhibitions, and publications. Efimova received a B.A. from New York University and a Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester. She is the author of several artist monographs and exhibition catalogs.