About

The Women’s Art Library is a collection of photographic, ephemeral, personal and published art documentation initiated by women artists in the late 1970s. Thriving as an artists’ organization and publishing a magazine until 2002, the collection was then gifted to Goldsmiths and forms part of its Special Collections. The Women’s Art Library continues to be developed through artists’ contributions and acquisitions. It also supports a programme of artistic research including artists’ residencies. These are either instigated by artists or set up through partnerships with initiatives like Feminist Review, the Birth Rites Collection and Goldsmiths Exhibition Hub. How this work shapes the way the Women’s Art Library fulfills its work promoting the visibility of women’s art practice was the subject of a recent film by Holly Antrum titled Yes to the Work!: The Women’s Art Library https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr9ygjGTk1E  This work was commissioned by the Art360 Foundation. https://www.art360foundation.org.uk/

WAL alongside The Jo Spence Memorial Library Archive underpins the Animating Archives research project with a web site featuring experimental research in radical archival collections. https://sites.gold.ac.uk/animatingarchives/

The WAL collection is accessible to all researchers along with many of the other Special Collections at Goldsmiths. For more information about visiting and access to the Archive and Textile Catalogue go to the Special Collections https://www.gold.ac.uk/library/special-collections/