In 2021 the Archives Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries (UWM) acquired a small collection of women and non-binary artists’ papers, with a special focus on artists of color, called the Milwaukee Women’s Art Library (MWAL). It was intended to document parts of the local arts scene that are underrepresented in the city’s repositories.
The following year UWM secured grant funding from the Digital Public Library of America through its Mellon-funded Digital Equity Fund to help diversify the country’s digital historical record holdings, which it used to hire a Community Ambassador to work with the MWAL collection through fall 2023. The position would be held by a practicing local artist with deep connections in the local arts scene – not an archivist – who would be charged with conducting outreach in that community to “plant the seeds” of the historical value of artists’ papers and the need to preserve them, whether at UWM, another local repository or community archives, or keeping their own personal archives. After learning about the MWAL collection and archival appraisal practices, and then spending most of the year engaged in local outreach, the community ambassador would then join the archives in reviewing its collecting policy, deed of gift, and other policy infrastructure as a representative of the local arts community considering their own concerns and those of the many other artists they had spoken with.
In this session, the MWAL Community Ambassador and representatives from the UWM Libraries will discuss the project’s structure, progress, and impact, and will then address questions from the audience.
