In my role as Professor of Art Education and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at The Pennsylvania State University, I coordinated the first Art+Feminism wikistorming event at Penn State in 2014, and I was hooked and have coordinated the annual event each year since, joined by many others who believe in the work. I love to witness participants beam with accomplishment as they make their first edits changing the knowledge narratives that misrepresent or exclude the transformative work of feminist activist art and art education.
The Penn State School of Visual Arts Art Education Program’s annual daylong event is part of a worldwide coalition of numerous satellite edit-a-thons, which have taken place, typically in March or April, at universities, museums, and community sites across the country and internationally to bring to Wikipedia knowledge of feminist art education, art, curators, artists, and collectives. Feminist coalitions involve activism for specific goals without glossing over vital differences in people’s daily experiences of gender as it intersects with other systems of domination and oppression. Feminist coalitions focus on power and responsibility to address critical pressing questions, such as: Who is included—explicitly or implicitly; and what issues, or agendas, are working towards changing misinformed, missing, and erased histories and knowledge?
This living archive guides how I have coordinated and facilitated Art+Feminism wikistorming events, and provides a history of the presentations leading to editing, and wikistorming accomplishments. I hope by sharing my processes of coordinating and facilitating this will help you to initiate Art+Feminism wikistorming events.
The presentations linked per year at the “History” menu are excellent resources for teaching and learning. For example, Farrah JasmineDingal, Penn State Renewable Energy and Sustainable Systems MPS candidate, presented in 2022 “Portraits ofResistance: Peasant Women of the Philippines” with connections to AMIHAN’s art campaigns such as the Sama-Samang Artista para sa Kilusang Agraryo (SAKA) Portrait Series. Lauren Stetz, Penn State Art Education Ph.D.candidate, presented in 2022 “Violence Against Women Art Map: A Transnational Community of Artist Activists,” which was added to Violence Against Women wikipedia page. Ye Sul Park, Penn State Art Education Ph.D. student,presented in 2022 “Gender Shades: Joy Buolamwini, Founder of Algorithmic Justice League” which was add to theCareers and Research section of the Joy Buolamwini wikipedia page. Xalli Zúñiga, Penn State Art Education Ph.D.candidate, presented in 2022 “Drawing Gender Justice in Color through the Threads of Indigenous Resistance” witha focus on creating a wikipedia page for Macedonia Blas Flores. Eunkyung Hwang, Penn State Art Education Ph.D.candidate, presented in 2022 “Gidra: Restiveness of Asian American Women Activists in the 1970s.” Although theGidra section on Wikipedia elaborates on women’s existence in Gidra, there were some omissions about their AsianAmerican feminist orientation and many names of women editors. These are some of the examples from 2022. The recordings of presentations are excellent resources as well as how the presenters prepared material for all in attendance to add to and edit Wikipedia pages. Presenters showcased at this site granted permission to record and make public the recording.
Karen Keifer-Boyd, May 28, 2023