As part of its celebration of Women’s History Month in March, New York’s Museum of Modern Art will host its fourth annual Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon on March 11.
Given the current political climate, the organizers believe that the event is more crucial than ever. “We’ve been deeply disturbed by the sheer amount of fake news on social media, and its possible influence on the recent US election,” said Art+Feminism organizers Siân Evans, Jacqueline Mabey, McKensie Mack, and Michael Mandiberg in a statement.
“Wikipedia is something that belongs to all of us,” they added. “It’s not a privately held resource, its content isn’t motivated by the whims of any owners. When you have a government actively pushing ‘alternative facts,’ improving the reliability and completeness of Wikipedia is an important act of everyday resistance.”
In addition to providing tutorials for inexperienced Wikipedia users and reference materials about female artists, the organizers will host programming throughout the day.
Kimberly Drew. Courtesy Kimberly Drew.
Kimberly Drew, the social media manager of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, will kick things off at 10 a.m., moderating a panel with writer Joanne McNeil and Data & Society Research Institute fellow Zara Rahman about how to accurately find and disseminate reliable sources on difficult-to-access news items.
The MoMA is just one of a number of edit-a-thons from Art+Feminism happening across the world this March, at sites including the Art Gallery of Ontario; the Aspen Art Museum, Colorado; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), Washington, DC, and beyond.
Other art-themed initiatives promoting Women’s History Month include the second year of the NMWA’s popular social media campaign. Beginning March 1, the world’s only major museum honoring women’s contributions to the arts will again promote the hashtag #5WomenArtists, challenging participants to see if they can even name five artists who are female.
Over 11,000 individuals and 400 institutions from 20 countries shared their favorite women artists using the hashtag, helping publicize the need for gender parity in the arts. For 2017, 150 institutions from 41 states, 16 countries, and five continents have already announced their planned participation. To learn more about women artists, keep an eye on NMWA’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, website, and blog throughout the month.
Art+Feminism’s fourth annual Wikipedia Edit-a-thon will take place at the Museum of Modern Art’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Education and Research Building, 4 West 54 Street, New York on Saturday, March 11, 2017, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.