SoHo Women Artists is a group portrait featuring a number of May Stevens's friends-well-known feminist artists and thinkers as well as several SoHo residents. Depicted in a friezelike composition are, from left to right: Signora D'Apolito, owner of a bakery; two older men from the Italian community; May Stevens herself; Harmony Hammond; Joyce Kozloff, sitting on the ground with her son Nikolas; Marty Pottenger; Louise Bourgeois wearing one of her sculptures; Miriam Schapiro; the cultural critic Lucy Lippard; and Sarah Charlesworth with a bicycle.

In contrast to Stevens's previous flat and poster-like style, SoHo Women Artists displays a looser brush stroke and stronger modeling. Likewise, the representation of the figures resembles a montage with multiple viewpoints that differ from Stevens's earlier work, which was constructed with not only a single perspective but, figuratively speaking, also a narrower political view in mind. Two examples of this are represented in the background: Benny Andrews and Big Daddy (1976) on the left and Big Daddy Draped (1971) on the right. The central work represented is Artemisia Gentileschi (1976), an imaginary portrait of the seventeenth-century painter who has been celebrated by feminist art historians.

SoHo Women Artists belongs to a group of large paintings that Stevens has called history painting, or "parod[ies] thereof,"(1) which present an alternative art history. They continue the tradition of hisotircal group portraits but represent a recent part of history in which Stevens, and women in general, participated. While Stevens is thus subverting history painting, she is using its authority at the same time.

(1) Notes by the artist, dated 29 November 1993, a copy of which is in the possession of the National Museum of Women in the Arts Library and Research Center, Archive of Women Artists.