FEBRUARY 14, 2019
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRESS CONTACT: MOLLY KURZIUS, molly_kurzius@moma.org
New York City – Art+Feminism’s sixth-annual Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, an all-day event designed to generate coverage of gender, feminism, and the arts on Wikipedia, will take place at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Education and Research Building, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 4 West 54 Street, on Saturday, March 2, 2019 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The much-anticipated event features panel discussions, workshops, tutorials for the beginner Wikipedian, ongoing editing support, reference materials, childcare, and refreshments. People of all gender identities and expressions are encouraged to attend.
“This year we focused on growth, both in people and in focus,” said Art+Feminism lead co-organizers Siân Evans, Jacqueline Mabey, McKensie Mack, Michael Mandiberg, and Melissa Tamani Becerra. “We welcomed Melissa Tamani Becerra as lead co-organizer, we now boast thirteen of Art+Feminism regional organizers from Accra to Taiwan, and we’ve brought on Community and Communication Fellows with the goal of training the next generation of activists in the arts. And, in focusing our 2019 campaign on editing about non-binary topics, we made public our personal commitment to an expansive understanding of gender. This way, we can better represent the gender identities of Art+Feminism organizers and participants.“
The Edit-a-thon at The Museum of Modern Art will feature a series of programs throughout the day. This year’s event kicks off with a conversation exploring visibility and vulnerability, featuring writer and archivist Che Gossett; performance artist, writer, and educator Alok Vaid-Menon; and Simone Browne, an Associate Professor in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. The discussion is moderated by Danielle A. Jackson, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance Art, The Museum of Modern Art.
The Edit-a-thon will also feature Gallery Sessions on feminist art; a discussion of the forward-thinking teaching artists who shaped the development of the Department of Education via materials in the library archives; a workshop on creating boundaries to combat implicit and explicit bias; and a teach-in on deleting and defending articles on Wikipedia. With the intention of making women artists and photographers of the African Diaspora more visible, The Black Lunch Table hosts their Wikimedia Photo Booth. Professional photographers Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Andrea Cauthen, and Adama Delphine Fawundu will be on hand taking portraits for upload to Wikimedia Commons. Communal editing tables will be hosted by AfroCROWD, an organization that increases awareness of free culture movements among people of African descent, and POWarts, which champions the professional lives of women in the art world. Across the street, New York Public Library’s 53rd Street Branch will host Drag Queen Story Hour and offer a zine-making workshop.
In addition to the Edit-a-thon at The Museum of Modern Art, New York City will play host to events at a wide range of institutions, including The Jewish Museum (March 3); Kickstarter (March 3); International Center of Photography (March 9); Interference Archive (March 10); Bard Graduate Center (March 16); Columbia University (March 16); Pratt Institute (March 19); The School of Visual Arts Library (March 21); Hauser & Wirth (March 27). Internationally, edit-a-thons will take place during the month of March at hundreds of institutions such as Impact Hub, Accra; Kunstmuseum Basel; The Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; Buni Innovation Hub, Dar es Salaam; Pand P, Eindhoven; Università degli studi di Salerno, Fisciano; MAMCO, Geneva; Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong; Cornell University, Ithaca; Musée d’art de Joliette; ICA, Los Angeles; Initiative for Indigenous Futures, Montreal; University of Nigeria, Nsukka; Mills College Art Museum, Oakland; Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris; Le Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Quebec City; University of Nevada, Reno; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago; Womany Wonderland, Taipei City; Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver; Winston-Salem State University; Material Zürich; and online in a month-long Edit-a-thon led by Women in Red. An updating list of venues can be found on the Art+Feminism’s website: https://artandfeminism.org/find-an-event/
On the eve of the March Edit-a-thons, Art+Feminism announced the release of new artworks from Wendy Red Star and Tuesday Smillie, created under the auspices of the Call to Action art commissions program. Established in 2017, artists are invited to create Creative Commons licensed works to be hosted on Wikimedia Commons; Divya Mehra’s Dangerous Women (Blaze of Glory) was the inaugural commission. Ashkaamne (matrilineal inheritance) (2019) by Wendy Red Star depicts the artist and her daughter, Beatrice Red Star Fletcher, reclining in matching striped shirts and blankets, with the words, “Apsáalooke feminist,” repeated in the background. Apsáalooke inheritance is based on matrilineal descent, tracing affiliation along with the mother-to-daughter line; the image represents a lineage, female empowerment, and the next generation. Rage/Sorrow (2018) by Tuesday Smillie is an animated GIF. The text “RAGE” appears large, filling the square format from left to right. “RAGE” is quickly obscured by a cascade of rectangles and the text, “SORROW,” repeated in a smaller font. Rage/Sorrow, a born-digital work, suggests the role of technology and the internet in nurturing and exacerbating pre-existing social divisions. The endless loop of the GIF mimics a cycle of anger and anguish produced by the constant stream of horrifying news.
Founded in 2014 by Siân Evans, Jacqueline Mabey, Michael Mandiberg and Laurel Ptak, Art+Feminism is a do-it-yourself campaign to improve coverage of gender, feminism, and the arts on Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s gender trouble is well-documented; in a 2011 survey, the Wikimedia Foundation found that less than 10% of its contributors identify as women. This lack of participation has led to significant gaps in content on the world’s most popular online research tool. Since 2014, over 10,000 people at more than 800 events around the world have participated in our edit-a-thons, resulting in the creation and improvement of more than 33,000 articles on Wikipedia.
The 2019 Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at The Museum of Modern Art is organized by Art+Feminism, led by Siân Evans, Jacqueline Mabey, McKensie Mack, Michael Mandiberg, and Melissa Tamani Becerra, in collaboration with AfroCROWD, Black Lunch Table, Women in Red, the Professional Organization for Women in the Arts (POWarts) and The Museum of Modern Art, New York and with support from Qubit New Music, Inc. and Wikimedia NYC.
Art+Feminism’s Regional Ambassadors are Mohammed Sadat Abdulai, Accra; Marta Delatte, Barcelona; Daniela Brugger, Basel; Walaa Abdel Manaem, Cairo; Medhavi Gandhi, Chandigarh; Amanda Meeks, Flagstaff; Dominique Eliane, Ivory Coast; Stacey Allan, Los Angeles; Amber Berson, Montreal; Linden How, Portland; Taryn Tomasello, Portland; Juliana Monteiro, São Paulo and Jessie Mi, Taiwan. The 2019 Fellows are Keon Dillon and Nina Yeboah.
The Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at The Museum of Modern Art is supported by The Modern Women’s Fund.
The Art + Feminism initiative is made possible by the Wikimedia Foundation.
Education at MoMA is made possible by a partnership with Volkswagen of America.