The Courage to Create: The Intriguing Career of MVHC Member and Artist Elizabeth Langer

We are proud to share the story of our member, Elizabeth Langer, a Jewish artist whose life’s work speaks to the pursuit of justice, resilience and creativity.

Elizabeth Langer is known for many things in our community at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center. You may have seen her playful collages rooted in the geometric shapes of Manhattan architecture, Hebrew calligraphy, and her figurative paintings and prints expressing the human condition here on the Vineyard or perhaps in New York. You may have met Elizabeth at the event she has hosted at the Hebrew Center honoring Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who worked with her at Rutgers School of Law. We celebrate her as a powerful example of someone who followed her convictions across multiple paths: first as a lawyer and later as an artist.

Born and raised in New York, Elizabeth was drawn to politics—notably the burgeoning civil rights movement—and art. She served simultaneously as both feature editor and art editor of her Great Neck high school paper. As a high school junior, she considered a medical career and interviewed at Boston University’s combined undergraduate-medical program. At that interview, she was informed that although her grades were excellent, admitting women was a waste of resources since, in the view of the medical school, women applicants were seeking husbands, not medical careers. This rejection planted a seed for a lifelong commitment to feminism and justice.

After graduating cum laude from Barnard College, she continued to face the limitations placed on women, discovering that the only jobs she could find were essentially secretarial. Instead, she opted for a volunteer position on the defense team of the Chicago 7 Trial, a criminal prosecution brought by the Nixon administration against organizers of protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. That high profile experience caused her to rethink her goals. In 1970, she enrolled in law school at Rutgers. There, she launched the first US journal focused on women’s legal rights, the Women’s Rights Law Reporter. For faculty advisor, she managed to recruit one of the two women faculty members, Professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“The memory that pops up is how surprised I was that she said yes when I asked her to be the faculty advisor at the Women’s Rights Law Reporter,” Elizabeth recalls. “At that point, we had no money, we had nothing. We didn’t even have a place to meet—it had been in someone’s apartment.” But Professor Ginsburg understood the urgent need for a legal publication amplifying women’s voices.

Click on the images above to enlarge them.

Following law school graduation, Elizabeth served as a Legislative Assistant to Congresswoman Bella Abzug of New York, another trailblazing feminist leader, working on women’s issues and the impeachment of then President Richard Nixon. Abzug had co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus alongside Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, and Betty Friedan. Elizabeth went on to practice law for 35 years, eventually opening her own private practice, again focusing on women’s issues.

After decades in Washington, D.C., Elizabeth felt the magnetic pull of New York. One day, her husband Richard Chused, who was on the tenured faculty at Georgetown Law School, surprised her by saying, “Would you like to move back to New York?” “Of course” she answered, only to find out he had been quietly considering sending out résumés to law schools in NY. He was well aware of her longing to return to NY.

When they were settled back in the city, Elizabeth seized the opportunity to pursue her longtime passion for art. What began as a temporary break from law became a complete career pivot. She found a studio, began painting, creating collages, and exhibiting her work. “Once I began making art as a serious pursuit, I lost the desire to return to law,” she says. Justice Ginsburg later wrote to her, admiring her “courage to become an artist.”

Elizabeth Langer’s drawings, paintings, collages, and prints have been shown in venues across the country, including the HUC Museum in NY, the Jewish Museum of Florida, the Corcoran Collection in DC, the National Arts Club of NY, the Monmouth Museum and many others. Her work is included in many permanent collections here and abroad, including the NY Historical Society and the Martha’s Vineyard Museum.

For more details on Elizabeth’s life and work, read “Seizing the Moments: The Beginnings of the Women’s Rights Law Reporter and a Personal Journey.”