Office Hours: Women Artists at Work in the Art World, 1945–1990
This edited volume invites proposals for original essays on the overlooked roles of women artists as administrators, educators, curators, writers, and cultural organizers in the United States and the Americas from the postwar period through the 1990s. “Office Hours: Women Artists at Work in the Art World, 1945–1990” foregrounds the structural, curatorial, and bureaucratic labor of women artists working within, alongside, and against dominant art world frameworks, reframing institutional histories and feminist art discourse in the second half of the twentieth century.
The volume considers administrative labor not as peripheral, but as generative, political, and creative work. It asks how women artists’ dual roles shaped postwar art ecologies, networks, and infrastructures, how institutional labor intersected with artistic practice and how transnational exchanges across the Americas contributed to larger cultural and political aims.
Contributions may include individual case studies or broader structural critiques. Interdisciplinary approaches bridging art history, museum studies, feminist theory, archival studies, and labor history are especially encouraged.
Possible Topics include:
- Feminist collectives and artist-run institutions (e.g., Woman’s Building, A.I.R. Gallery, Artemisia, the Women’s Interart Center, Social and Public Art Resource Center – SPARC)
- Race, gender, and class in institutional labor and access
- Archival recovery of under-recognized administrative labor
- Intersections of teaching, caretaking, and feminist pedagogy
- Institutional critique from within: working under/against systems of exclusion
- Oral histories, letters, memos, and other documents of “invisible” work
The editors are seeking 8–10 contributors to write chapters of 6,000–8,000 words. Proposals should be submitted to Helena Shaskevich and Aliza Edelman by October 15th and must include a 300–500 word abstract, a brief biography (up to 150 words), and any relevant institutional affiliations.
Click here for further information on the Call for Paper.