WOMEN AND THE ARTS ROUNDTABLE - ARLIS/NA
Minutes of the Women and Art Roundtable Business meeting,
Monday, March 9, 1998, 1-2:30 p.m.
Respectfully submitted by Susan Clarke
sclarke@wppost.depaul.edu


The meeting of the Women and Art Roundtable [WAART] was called to order by 
Bonnie Reed, 1997-98 chair of the committee.  B. Reed read the minutes of the 1997 meeting and suggested that paragraph five of the minutes be amended to include the following statement; "It was voted unanimously to accept the proposal submitted by Susan Nurse." The minutes were so amended.  The annual budget was read and discussed.

The next order of business was the election of a new chair and moderator.  Sara J. McDonald volunteered and was unanimously elected and will serve as moderator for Vancouver 1999.  Susan Nurse was elected co-chair elect and will serve as moderator for Pittsburgh 2000.  WAART archives will be transferred to S. McDonald.

Congratulations were given to Susan Nurse for the excellent panel that she assembled and moderated for this year's conference:  Women and the Arts, Session 12; Education of Women in the Arts; An Historic Overview.  Susan outlined some of the successful methods she used in contacting and working with the speakers so that their talks would be well coordinated. 

Proposal ideas for the 1999 conference followed. Emily Carr (1871-1945), Canadian painter and writer with Native American Indian interests was suggested as an appropriate topic for Vancouver 1999.  This led to a discussion of other Native American and/or Asian-American artists, ethnic and gender themes and the possibility that other divisions or round tables might be interested in co-sponsorship.  S. McDonald will write up the new proposal and will look into co-sponsorship.

M. Berger, Board Representative, reminded us of deadlines for conference proposals, special funding, and management calendar, and the strategic plan available on the web.

C. Goldsmith suggested we create a listserve to enable committee members to easily discuss session proposals and other issues, and provide a forum that might attract new members to the committee.  It was agreed that the listserve name should be named ARLIS-WA.  C. Goldsmith offered to set up the listserve.

Several other projects were suggested as activities for the Women and Arts round table, such as locating archives of women artists.  S. Nurse will look for private archival material from a project on which she is currently working.  H. Rusak raised the issue of the difficulty for women artists to find exhibition space.  She suggested that it would be beneficial to identify libraries that would be willing to mount art of emerging women artists.  It was further suggested that each chapter could survey it's own area. Related issues to be surveyed would be exhibition policies, insurance, sales, public access, installation, input of the library, subject matter, censorship, performance, and so forth.  Halina offered to develop the questionnaire and sent it to libraries.  Student Laura M. Hilbert offered to assist Halina.