Contribution to Book
"Telling Stories Differently: Writing Women Artists into Wikipedia"
Extraordinary Partnerships: How the Arts and Humanities are Transforming America
(2020)
Abstract
One of the more clever memes to emerge in recent years is a variation on the iconic poster showing Rosie the Riveter - strong armed, defiant - beneath a new mantra. Replacing ‘We Can Do It,” the meme declares ‘We Can [edit]!’ It’s a fitting response to the rhizomatic initiative known as Art+Feminism, a Wikipedia edit-a-thon initiative that mobilizes the arts and humanities on behalf of women in the arts through inclusive participatory advocacy, media literacy, and consciousness raising. Inaugurated in February 2014 by a group of Wikipedia users in New York City, this initiative has inspired over thirty satellite Art + Feminism Wikipedia edit-a-thons worldwide. Anyone is invited to attend an A+F edit-a-thon, often voluntarily organized by an individual or institution; participants across the gender spectrum edit an existing article and/or create a new article, frequently with the assistance of an attending Wikipedia Ambassador. This initiative aims to close the gender gap in Wikipedia’s art-related articles by addressing the relative absence of articles on women-identified artists. This absence represents a huge hole in an encyclopedia of shared knowledge that has the power to shape public understanding of the arts. Wikipedia has this power because it is the repository of knowledge to which leading search engines as well as Siri, Apple’s “intelligence personal assistant,” navigate from keyword searches for noteworthy artists and artworks. Ultimately, an A+F edit-a-thon raises awareness about the persistence of sexism in everything from the information we consume online to experiences in our day-to-day lives. This paper will consider the growing community of A+F in the Twin Cities by sharing evidence of successful edit-a-thons, best practices, and potential future outcomes.
Keywords
- Art + Feminism,
- Wikipedia,
- edit-a-thon,
- gender gap,
- art history
Disciplines
Publication Date
2020
Editor
Christine Henseler
Publisher
Lever Press
Citation Information
Amy Hamlin. ""Telling Stories Differently: Writing Women Artists into Wikipedia"" Amherst, MAExtraordinary Partnerships: How the Arts and Humanities are Transforming America (2020) p. 119 - 136 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/akhamlin/21/