Ottawa galleries host Wikipedia edit-a-thons for International Women's Day
Carleton University Art Gallery and Ottawa Art Gallery both to host editing events Tuesday
Canadian painter Paraskeva Clark was a politically-charged artist who participated in the inaugural exhibition of the Canadian Group of Painters, but her Wikipedia page offers few other details about her life and career.
It doesn't even include a photo — something a group of Ottawa artists hopes to change on International Women's Day.
"What you find there is actually an image not even of her husband but of her husband's friend," Ottawa Art Gallery curator Michelle Gewurtz said Monday on CBC Ottawa's All In A Day.
"So if you're talking about the level of representation, for a quick look, it gives you a really kind of skewed image of who Paraskeva Clark was and what her life and career were about."
Gewurtz is hosting an edit-a-thon at the Ottawa Art Gallery to tackle the "gender gap" on Wikipedia, along with the Carleton University Art Gallery, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesday.
Surveys done by the Wikimedia Foundation suggest women make up only 10 to 20 per cent of editors. The Ottawa galleries are building on a New York campaign called Art + Feminism that sprung up to address the lack of participation of women on Wikipedia.
Each gallery will provide tutorials and reference materials, and encourages people of all gender identities to bring a laptop and ideas for entries to participate.
Gewurtz said her background is gender issues and diversity issues in historical and contemporary art.
"It was definitely something that I personally wanted the gallery to be a part of," she said. "The hope is that people will ... once they start learning the skills they might take it upon themselves on their own time to continue this kind of work."
With files from All In A Day