Feminist Activism - The Founding Members of BWAF visit CWAHI
On Friday, August 9, the founding members of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, based in New York City, visited with the founding members of the Canadian Women Artists History Initiative at Concordia University. Tea and cake were served!
From left to right, Wanda Bubriski, Janice Anderson, Kristina Huneault, Beverly Willis, Cynthia Hammond, shown with a photograph of artist Mary Hiester Reid (1854-1921). Photo credit: Braden Scott, 2013.
Beverly Willis is one of the United States' most prolific architects, having designed over 600 buildings during her long career. In 2002 she was moved by the low representation of women in American architectural history books, and created a non-profit foundation to work to make the architectural culture of her country more inclusive of women's achievements.
The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation works with individual scholars, architects, and cultural arbiters to raise the profile of living and historical women architects. The Foundation regularly collaborates with schools of architecture across the US, as well as major institutions such as the National Building Museum in Washington, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Guggenheim in New York.
They foster public knowledge about women architects through research, publications and, more recently, films. On the invitation of Dr Cynthia Hammond, Chair of the Department of Art History, Willis and founding executive director, Wanda Bubriski, visited Concordia University on August 9th to share their mission, and learn more about the Canadian Women Artists History Initiative.
CWAHI founders, Dr Janice Anderson, Dr Kristina Huneault, and Melinda Reinhart were present, along with CWAHI work-study students Zoe Wonfor and Braden Scott, Dr Catherine MacKenzie of the Department of Art History, and Kathleen Perry, Advisor, Special Projects, FOFA. Dr Anderson presented the collection, archival, and diffusion activities of CWAHI, and Willis described a recent collaboration with the National Endowment for the Arts, to create a "Top 50" list of North American women architects. BWAF presented CWAHI with their film, A Girl is A Fellow Here" ~ 100 Women Architects in the Studio of Frank Lloyd Wright (2009), and received a copy of CWAHI's first book, Rethinking Professionalism: Women and Art in Canada, 1850-1970 (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2012).
Additional information
The website of the Canadian Women Artists History Initiative, which is hosted within the Department of Art History, Concordia University
The website of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, based in New York City, which seeks to expand knowledge about American women's contributions to the built environment
The website of the Department of Art History's digital image and slide collection facilities, which are also home to the CWAHI physical archive on Canadian women artists and architects.