News about WAAND

International scholarship on contemporary women artists enters a new era this month with the first release of the Women Artists Archives National Directory (WAAND) at http://waand.rutgers.edu. Please search our innovative online directory to archival materials on women visual artists and artists' organizations in the U.S. Developed by Rutgers University Libraries, with initial funding by The Getty, WAAND will make its public debut on February 15, 2007, in conjunction with the 2007 annual meeting of the College Art Association at the Hilton New York, 1335 Avenue of the Americas, New York City. You can also visit us in the CAA Exhibit Hall, Booth 52.

The Women Artists Archives National Directory unites online information on archival repositories into a single union catalog. Partnering with more than 80 institutions that include the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Library of Congress, and the National Association of Woman Artists, WAAND currently directs users to information on approximately 800 discrete collections indexed to more than 5,000 individual artists' names. Outreach to identify and enlist the support of additional archival institutions will follow this initial release.

WAAND's principal investigators, Judith K. Brodsky and Ferris Olin, are influential members of the artistic and art historical communities and leaders in the development of Web-based tools for women's studies and visual arts; they are co-directors of the newly-founded Institute for Women & Art at Rutgers. Digital architect Grace Agnew, the Associate University Librarian for Digital Library Systems at Rutgers University Libraries, has significant expertise and international prominence in online directory design and development and digital rights management technologies.

"Authoritative information about contemporary women artists and their art is the cornerstone of WAAND," says the project's co-director Judith K. Brodsky. "As a result of the Feminist Art Movement of the 1970s, American women artists are recognized internationally for innovative ideas that are now embedded in contemporary visual art practice. Nevertheless, their erasure from the art historical record remains a cause for concern. Too many women artists enjoy fruitful careers, only to have their artworks and their professional accomplishments vanish from the art historical record.

"There is tremendous interest in identifying and digitizing resources about artists and art works based on gender, ethnicity and geographic distribution," says digital architect Grace Agnew. "As digital collections and primary resources emerge in a rapid yet fragmentary manner, a directory that can serve to integrate collections and resources about visual arts and artists becomes a critical tool for discovery and navigation."

WAAND's founding institutional participants are: A.I.R. Gallery; Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; the Brodsky Center for Print and Paper; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University; Hatch-Billops Collection, Archives of African American Cultural History; Johnson & Johnson Corporate Art Program; Minnesota Historical Society; Museum Archives, Museum of Modern Art; New Jersey Historical Society; Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress; Special Collections & University Archives, Rutgers University.

WAAND gratefully acknowledges initial funding by The Getty Foundation. WAAND is also made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional financial support from the Institute for Women & Art at Rutgers, the Maria and Henry Leon Memorial Fund, Judith K. Brodsky and Ferris Olin.

February 15, 2007