Art and Feminism is an annual worldwide edit-a-thon to add content to Wikipedia about female artists. The project, founded by Siân Evans, Jacqueline Mabey, Michael Mandiberg, and Laurel Ptak, has been described as "a massive multinational effort to correct a persistent bias in Wikipedia, which is disproportionately written by and about men". In 2014, Art+Feminism's inaugural campaign attracted 600 volunteers at 30 separate events. The following year, 1,300 volunteers attended 70 events in 17 countries, on four continents.
Establishment
Art+Feminism started when Artstor librarian Siân Evans was designing a project for women and art for the Art Libraries Society of North America. Evans talked with fellow curator Jacqueline Mabey, who had been impressed by Wikipedia contributors' organization of edit-a-thon events to commemorate Ada Lovelace. Mabey spoke with Michael Mandiberg, a professor at the City University of New York who had been incorporating Wikipedia into classroom learning. Mandiberg in turn talked with Laurel Ptak, a fellow at the art and technology non-profit Eyebeam, who agreed to help plan the event. The team then recruited local Wikipedians Dorothy Howard, then Wikipedian in residence at Metropolitan New York Library Council; and Richard Knipel, then representing the local chapter of Wikipedia contributors through Wikimedia New York City. One reason for establishing the Art+Feminism project included responding to negative media coverage about Wikipedia's cataloging system. The project continues to fill content gaps in Wikipedia and increase the number of female contributors. Only about 17 percent of biographies on Wikipedia are about women and only about 15 percent of Wikipedia editors are female. McKensie Mack was appointed Director of Art+Feminism in 2018.
Events
Outside the United States, the 2015 event received media coverage at locations including Australia, Canada, Cambodia, India, New Zealand, and Scotland. Inside the United States the event received media coverage at the flagship location in New York, and also in California, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Texas, and West Virginia. In 2020, due to concerns from the COVID-19 pandemic, the event was held virtually, via the Zoom video conferencing app.
Reception
Content contributed by participants in the editing events is tracked in a coordinating forum on Wikipedia. In November 2014, Foreign Policy magazine named Evans, Mabey, Mandiberg, Richard Knipel, Dorothy Howard, and Ptak as "global thinkers" for addressing gender bias on Wikipedia.
