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Institutional activism: documenting contemporary women artists in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2016

Ferris Olin
Ferris Olin*
Affiliation:
Margery Somers Foster Center, Mabel Smith Douglass Library, 8 Chapel Drive, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8527, USA
*
Email: olin@rci.rutgers.edu
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Extract

The Margery Somers Foster Center, based at the Mabel Smith Douglass Library on the Douglass College campus of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, is a resource center and digital archive focused on women, scholarship and leadership. Numerous intersecting initiatives based at the center, library and university are making visible the lives, works and contributions to cultural history of contemporary women artists active in the United States.

Type
Research Article
Information
Art Libraries Journal , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , 2007 , pp. 11 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © The Art Libraries Society 2007

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References

1. Walker, Alice, In search of our mothers’ gardens (New York: Harvest Books, 1983), 92.Google Scholar
2. Founded in 1918, Douglass College was New Jersey’s first public higher education institution to admit women. Throughout this article I will refer to Rutgers, the State University in the abbreviated form as Rutgers University.Google Scholar
3. Among its constituents are: Center for American Women and Politics, Center for Women and Work, Center for Women’s Global Leadership, Institute for Research on Women, Douglass College, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies (one of the top three US programs from among over 700, offering a PhD in Women’s and Gender Studies), and the newly established Institute for Women and Art. See http://iwl.rutgers.edu/.Google Scholar
4. See, for example, the Foster Center’s Rutgers Gender Scholars Database, http://genderscholars.rutgers.edu/.Google Scholar
5. See http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/msfoster. It was formerly referred to as the Women’s Archives.Google Scholar
6. See Denda, Kayo, ‘Beyond subject headings: a structured information retrieval tool for interdisciplinary fields,’ Library resources & technical services 49 no. 4 (2006): 266–275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7. Marter, Joan, Off limits: Rutgers University and the avant-garde, 1957-1963 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999).Google Scholar
See also Olin, Ferris, ed., Artists on the edge: Douglass College and the Rutgers MFA (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Libraries, 2005) for a history of some of the women artists taught by these faculty, including Alice Aycock, Joan Snyder and Jackie Winsor.Google Scholar
8. Walker, In search of our mothers’ gardens, 4.Google Scholar
9. For a history of the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series see Smith, Beryl K., ‘The Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series: from idea to institution,’ Journal of the Rutgers University Libraries 54, no. 1 (June 1992): 4–16 Google Scholar
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11. To date, Seri Berg, Hung Liu, Miriam Schapiro, Carolee Schneeman, Molly Snyder-Fink, May Stevens and June Wayne have held this appointment.Google Scholar
12. Rutgers EAD Finding Aids/Foster Center, http://www2.scc.rutgers.edu/ead/.Google Scholar
13. Alloway’s essay appeared in the 1976 catalogue, Lippard’s in 1975, and Nochlin’s in 1974; Alloway, also wrote about the series in ‘Women’s art in the 1970s,’ Art in America (May 1966): 66,Google Scholar
while Marter, Joan discussed it in her article, ‘Women artists,’ Arts magazine (February 1978): 23.Google Scholar
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15. The University Librarian announced this at a gala dinner organized to honor the many artists represented in the exhibition How American women artists invented postmodernism 1970-1975. This exhibition and event kicked off The Feminist Art Project.Google Scholar
16. Much of this material is located within Rutgers University Libraries’ Special Collections and University Archives, a collaborative partner in acquiring these materials. Many of the finding aids to the collections can be found in Women’s history sources: a guide to manuscripts and archival collections, www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/libs/scua/womens_fa/womenhomenpage.shtml, an online resource funded by a grant from the university administration to the Foster Center.Google Scholar
17. Cottingham, Laura, Not for sale: feminism and art in the USA during the 1970s (NY: Hawkeye Production, 1998); Gloria was at White Columns Gallery, New York City, 13 September-20 October 2002, and Wack! art and the feminist revolution, curated by Connie Butler, opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA in March 2007, and then at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC and P.S.I in November 2007.Google Scholar
18. Email correspondence between Ferris Olin and Hilary Robinson. The book that resulted from Robinson, ’s research is Feminism-art-theory: an anthology, 1968-2000 (Maldin, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2001).Google Scholar
19. One such example was Enid Bell, a prominent New Jersey sculptor active during the Works Project Administration and into the middle of the century.Google Scholar
20. See Dana Library’s Public Art Virtual Tour, http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/libs/dana_lib/dana_lib_art_tour.shtml. In addition the Dana Library annually sponsors the New Jersey Book Arts Symposium, in which many women artists participate.Google Scholar
21. See http://waand.rutgers.edu/.Google Scholar
22. One of the first projects undertaken and funded with a special grant from the University was a portal to unique scholarly resources on women’s leadership found in selective teaching departments, centers, institutes and libraries at Rutgers. WILD: women in leadership database (www.scc.rutgers.edu/wild) is a searchable database that includes 200 digitized objects that are representative of the types of materials included in the records and archives, including books and brochures, posters and flyers, photographs, video recordings, correspondence and memos, audio recordings and miscellaneous digital objects.Google Scholar
23. See http://mic.imtc.gatech.edu/.Google Scholar
24. The URL for the New Jersey Digital Highway is http://www.njdigitalhighway.org/. See another Foster Center project, the award-winning New Jersey Women’s History website (www.scc.rutgers.edu/njwomenshistory), which makes available documents, photographs and museum objects on the history of women in New Jersey state. This collaborative project was created with the Women’s Project of New Jersey, Inc., New Jersey Historical Society, Alice Paul Institute and Rutgers University Libraries.Google Scholar
25. Project Directors are Judith K. Brodsky, Founding Director of the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper (RCIPP) and Director of the Rutgers Institute for Women and Art and Ferris Olin, head of the Foster Center and Director of the Rutgers Institute for Women and Art, while the Project Manager is Nicole Plett, an arts critic and photo historian. The WAAND Working Team includes Grace Agnew, Associate University Librarian for Digital Library Systems; Jane D. Johnson, Project Manager of Moving Image Collections and visiting scholar at Rutgers; and Loren Runcie, programmer. A national Advisory Board worked with the team to develop controlled vocabulary and data elements, test various stages in WAAND’s development, and consult on a variety of issues. Members of this group are Camille Billops, Founder, Hatch-Billops Archives; Sherman Clarke, Head of Original Cataloging, New York University Libraries; Janis Ekdahl, Chief Librarian (retired), Museum of Modern Art; Mary Garrard, Professor Emerita, The American University; Barbara Natanson, Automated Reference Specialist, Prints & Photo Division, Library of Congress; Fernanda Perrone, Archivist and Head, Exhibitions Program, Special Collections & University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries; Susanne Warren, Director, John G. McCullough Free Library (North Bennington, VT); and Karen Weiss, Information Resources Manager, Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art.Google Scholar
26. WAAND’s architectural infrastructure can also be adapted for related projects. Enquiries have been received about using it as a model to develop directories for unique information sources on African American artists, as well as to track women’s studies research projects internationally.Google Scholar
27. See http://feministartproject.rutgers.edu/.Google Scholar
28. In 2004, SIGNS: journal of women in culture and society, a leading feminist scholarly publication, returned to Rutgers for a five-year period. It had originally been established at Rutgers more than 30 years previously and has moved every five years to another institution. The journal is published by the University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
29. The National Committee for The Feminist Art Project includes, in addition to Brodsky and Olin, Judy Chicago, Through the Flower; Lesley King-Hammond and Arlene Raven (deceased), Maryland Institute College of Art; Dena Muller, Women’s Caucus for Art; Maura Reilly, Elizabeth A. Sadder Center, Brooklyn Museum; and Susan Fisher Sterling, National Museum of Women in the Arts.Google Scholar
30. This is only a small sampling of the numerous anniversaries being celebrated. Many more can be found listed on The Feminist Art Project’s web pages.Google Scholar
31. The exhibition was mounted at the Mason Gross School of the Arts Galleries from 15 December 2005 to 27 January 2006. It is traveling to other New Jersey venues through June, 2007.Google Scholar
32. More than 16 state/regional groups are actively planning events and activities. These include the geographical areas of the Boston region, New York City, Western New York State, New Jersey, Baltimore, Washington DC, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin, Colorado and Southern California.Google Scholar
33. The website for the Institute for Women and Art is under construction during the summer and fall of 2006; its URL is http://iwa.rutgers.edu.Google Scholar
34. Among the units involved with women and art at Rutgers and now component members of the Institute are the Rutgers University Libraries (including the Foster Center, Dana Women Artists Series, Special Collections and University Archives Department, and Dana Library), Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Stedman Gallery Rutgers-Camden Campus) and Robeson Gallery (Rutgers-Newark Campus), Rutgers University Press, Woman’s art journal, Women’s Caucus for Art, Institute for Women’s Leadership, and the teaching departments in visual arts, art history and women’s and gender studies.Google Scholar