GLAM/Newsletter/June 2022/Contents/Australia report

This Month in GLAM – Volume XII, Issue VI, June 2022

Australia report

A celebration, a commitment, an edit-a-thon: Know My Name returns for 2022

One of Australia's most significant ongoing GLAM partnerships between Wikimedia Australia and the National Gallery of Australia continued in June with the third annual Know My Name Edit-a-thon, and it was quite the party.

Know My Name is a gender equity initiative of the National Gallery in Canberra, that aims to raise the profile of women and gender diverse artists, following a collection audit that found that only 25% of its collection of Australian art was created by women.

Accompanying a comprehensive exhibition in two parts over the last two years, the booked-out edit-a-thon at the gallery's research library, aimed to ensure that exhibiting artists in the National Gallery exhibitions Know My Name: Australia Women Artists 1900 to Now Part 1 and Part 2 were represented online through Wikipedia.

Following the artist's party in early June, where exhibiting artists were able to gather for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, around ten participants gathered in the National Gallery’s Research Library, to undertake Wikipedia training with Wikimedia Australia's Caddie Brain. The group collectively edited new and existing pages drawing on the extensive ephemera collections made available by the Library's team.

While the creation of new pages remains challenging for new editors, the event generated three new pages for artists Patricia Englund, Jann Dunn and Solvig Baas Becking.

The Know My Name series of edit-a-thons first kicked off in 2020, with a series of national simultaneous events in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Alice Springs, Hobart and Perth. During the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020, an online National Gallery Wikiclub was formed. Supported by Wikimedians Kerry Raymond and Linda Pascal and the Gallery’s Simon Underschultz, the group met regularly online to collectively edit. In-person events also continued in 2021 and now in 2022.

The 118 new pages on women artists created through the project have been viewed more than half a million times. Finding available photographic material to support these pages remains a challenge also.

The Know My Name partnership with Wikimedia Australia now forms part of the National Gallery's Gender Equity Action Plan 2022-2025 released on International Women's Day this year. Through the partnership Wikimedia Australia and the National Gallery will continue to work together in the coming years to increase access to information about women and gender diverse artists on Wikipedia.

It also represents many global initiatives that have aimed to address gender inequity on Wikipedia such as Art+Feminism, contributing to the number of articles about women that now stands at around 19%, a growth of around 3% since this partnership began.