Women of Colour Collection

Archive Collection

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Bookmark:http://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb1086-colour

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Scope and Content

UK Contemporary Individuals - arranged in alphabetical order by surname. Individual folders include information relating to the individual artist for example press cuttings and exhibition details including posters. Also details about UK exhibitions, organisations, conferences and events. USA contemporary individuals and USA historical individuals. .

Administrative / Biographical History

The Women's Art Library (also known as MAKE) was originally set up as the Women Artists slide Library in London in the late 1970s. This initiative from feminist artists' developed into an arts organisation publishing catalogues, books and a magazine from 1983-2002. During this time women artists deposited unique documentation on their work and created personal files that functioned together as an alternative public space. Thousands of artists from around the world are represented in some form in this collection. In 2004 the collection became part of Goldsmiths Library Special Collections. At Goldsmiths The Women's Art Library (MAKE) continued to collect slides, artist statements, exhibition ephemera, catalogues, and press material in addition to audio and videotapes, photographs and CD-Roms. As at 2009 they continued to welcome donations from women artists to help develop this collection.

Rita Keegan joined the Women Artists Library in 1987 to establish the 'Black Women Artists Index', later called 'Women in Colour'. Working in collaboration with the African Asian Visual Artists Archive, her task was to collate slides of the work of black women artists from exhibitions and compile folders on each individual made up of articles and other relevant papers from periodicals, magazines, catalogue extracts and books in the Women Artists Slide Library archives. The main focus of the collection is on work created in Britain, but includes material from around the world in particular the USA, the West Indies, Africa and Asia.