UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Technology meets art on Friday, March 4, when a Penn State Wikistorming event, the 2016 Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, invites the public to elevate the presence of women artists online. The second annual daylong event, part of a worldwide effort, is being held in advance of International Women’s Day, celebrated this year on March 8 under the theme “Pledge for Parity.”
Satellite edit-a-thon events are scheduled to take place at universities and museums across the country and internationally, including locations in Amsterdam, Paris, Moscow, Brussels and Berlin. Penn State’s Edit-a-thon, sponsored by the University Libraries, the College of Arts and Architecture and Wikimedia District of Columbia, begins at 10 a.m. in 207 Arts Cottage on the University Park campus. Interested participants, who are welcome regardless of level of technology knowledge or experience, are encouraged to bring a laptop.
Karen Keifer-Boyd, professor of art education and women’s, gender and sexuality studies, is coordinating the Penn State Edit-a-thon, which she calls an “empowering” effort. She has been involved in similar collective efforts to edit Wikipedia entries. “We would like the public to join us by adding articles and information about artists, feminist curatorial practices, feminist art pedagogy and other topics absent from Wikipedia,” she said.
The March 4 event includes lunch, a viewing of the documentary “Right Out of History: The Making of Judy Chicago’s ‘Dinner Party,’” a visit to the Judy Chicago Art Education Collection at the University Libraries, and a talk by visual artist Susan Hill, who narrated the documentary. Hill’s talk is titled “When this happens / Then that happens = Working Wisdom.”
The Judy Chicago Art Education Collection, a living online archive on feminist art education, is housed in the University Libraries’ Eberly Family Special Collections Library. Hill was head of needlework for artist Chicago’s monumental art installation “The Dinner Party (1975 – 1979),” which chronicles the history of women of achievement in Western civilization.
Hill and Chicago co-authored the book “Embroidering our Heritage: The Needlework of The Dinner Party,” published by Doubleday. Hill traveled with “The Dinner Party” to nearly all exhibition sites, facilitating local participation with installation and related events. Her work also includes community outreach at the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), during the production of The Great Wall of Los Angeles mural with SPARC founder Judy Baca. From 1980 to 2000, Hill was director of Artsreach, a multi-disciplinary, community-based artist residency organization affiliated with UCLA.
For more information about the Penn State Edit-a-thon, visit http://tinyurl.com/wikistorming.