Being, Making, Becoming: The Women’s Art Library

The Expanded Archives Network’s fall panel conversations celebrated two distinct, long-running feminist artist communities and archives projects: Women’s Art Library – now housed at Goldsmiths, University of London – and Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York. In both cases the place of the archive is critical, which is why the panels were broadcast live from within their respective library spaces. Both events incorporated videos created for the occasion with live conversations to give context to the wider communities, art practices and relationships that are activated in the creation of and response to the archives, focusing on themes of intergenerational dialogue, collectivity, sanctuary and the unique position of these radical spaces that exist within or outside of “institutions.”

The Women’s Art Library began as the Women Artists Slide Library, an artists’ initiative that developed into an arts organization publishing catalogs and books, as well as a magazine, from early 1983 to 2002. WAL actively collects slides, ephemera and documentation of women’s art practice, and functions as a creative space for artists, curators and researchers to convene, explore and make new work. The event featured the work of Dr. Althea Greenan, Curator of the Women’s Art Library, in conversation with Artist Lauren Craig and Writer and Researcher Chloe Turner, who considered how the archive has been used and experienced, its value as an intergenerational resource for political and artistic activism, and the possibilities and tensions of the WAL as a sanctuary and explorative space within a larger institution.

Our EAN collaborator, Art360 Foundation, worked with Greenan and Artist and Researcher Holly Antrum to produce the short film Yes to the Work!: The Women’s Art Library, shot in October 2022 and released to coincide with the event.  Viewable below, the film is framed by the voice and presence of Greenan, and also features some of the many women who have engaged with the WAL across generations including: Felicity Allen, Sarah Carne, Claire Collison, Lauren Craig, Galit Criden, Clare Gasson, Catherine Grant, Rita Keegan, Gina Nembhard, Symrath Patti, Nirmal Puwar, Gaytri Roopnarine and Chloe Turner.