Given that Charlotte Allen’s op-ed arguing that women are “dumb” appeared the week before “Are We There Yet?” opened, we can assume the answer to that question is “no.” Baby, we haven’t come a long way: Margaret LeJeune’s 2004 photograph of a woman holding a glass jar of baby-doll parts in front of her abdomen—from the series It’s What’s on the Inside That Counts —reminds us that women’s rights may even be curtailed. This piece was one of Croteau’s favorites from the juried show; she says she had hoped to see “much stronger political statements” than the high-quality but primarily personal work that was submitted. “I think younger women have let themselves be convinced that this is an individual struggle, not a group struggle,” she laments. “They’ve lost the concept of sisterhood.”

Back in 1973, ARC Gallery was founded upon that same principle of collective action. Iris Goldstein, a Chicago artist who has been a board member for 20 years, explains that in the 1970s, women felt they were being “written out of art history.” A group of women founded ARC Gallery “to give [women] an opportunity that they didn’t have at the time. They felt they were being excluded,” Goldstein says. Today, the nonprofit gallery, staffed entirely by volunteers, has ten active local board members who share the responsibilities of “gallery sitting,” funding ARC’s endeavors and curating shows (normally, three each month).

“Are We There Yet?” displays the Guerrilla Girls’ poster The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist (the advantages including “having an escape from the art world in your four freelance jobs” and “not having to undergo the embarrassment of being called a genius”), a piece that suggests the situation hadn’t improved by 1988. But Goldstein and Croteau agree that it has now…at least a little. Croteau believes that Chicago art institutions have been especially inclusive, giving women artists more support than their counterparts receive in supposedly progressive New York. The Art Institute, which Croteau says had never been part of this trend, recently acquired ARC Gallery’s archives for its Ryerson Library.

Yet even the earliest works in “Are We There Yet?” remain depressingly relevant. Martha Rosler’s angry and hilarious Semiotics of the Kitchen —a 1975 video in which a housewife demonstrating cooking implements wields them like deadly weapons—will resonate with anyone who’s ever been tempted to burn the house down instead of cleaning it.

That said, Goldstein insists ARC Gallery doesn’t have an overtly feminist agenda: “We think we’re doing our [part] by running our own operation the way we want to,” she concludes. “We’re in a good place now.” But she admits that ARC has survived “because members enjoyed working with other women to run an art gallery” that can show work they like instead of what will sell—work that might not be shown anywhere else.

“Are We There Yet?” is on view at ARC Gallery through March 29.