Contemporary Women Artists Files

The Contemporary Women Artists Files (CWAF), an active collection, documents American women artists active since the early 1970s. It is currently approximately 21 cubic feet in size. New materials are added, and this finding aid updated, on a regular basis. Media represented include paper, photographic prints and slides, videocassettes, CD's and DVDs.

The CWAF consists of background materials related to over 1500 artists. A large number of these artists submitted materials to the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series but were not selected to exhibit. Materials include correspondence, resumes, artist statements, slides, clippings, and exhibition announcements, checklists and catalogs. The files were established in 1994 with the intention of documenting contemporary women artists on a large scale; materials submitted prior to 1994 were transferred from the Operational records of the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series retrospectively. Most of the material dates from 1980 to the present, although some goes back as far as the early 1970s.

Most of the material in the CWAF is in paper media, including a number of bound exhibition catalogs. Clippings on newsprint have been or are currently being photocopied and the originals discarded. Photographic materials consist mostly of 35mm color slides, with black-and-white and color prints, color transparencies, and black-and-white and color negatives found in less significant numbers. Videocassettes, CDs, and DVDs exist in small numbers. All materials are stored in folders, and the various media are filed together, as they were originally, to preserve the relationships between materials and the integrity of the documentation of each individual artist. The Contemporary Women Artists Files are housed in filing cabinets.