UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State University Libraries’ most recent addition to the Judy Chicago Dialogue Portal completes a serial installation of a living archive on feminist art education supported through the Libraries’ archive of the Judy Chicago Art Education Collection.
Established in 2014, the Judy Chicago Dialogue Portal acts as a four-part resource of the artist’s online art education archive that can be used across disciplines. Each portal contains video lectures and response questions that participants answer as part of the dialogue. The lectures were recorded in April 2014 during the Judy Chicago: Planting a Feminist Art Education Archive Symposium.
“The Judy Chicago Dialogue Portal is an important worldwide online conversation about radical transformation of studio art education,” Karen Keifer-Boyd, Penn State professor of art education and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, said. “The Portal provides opportunities for students, scholars, artists, and educators to envision studio art education as creative environments to foster an inclusive world of difference through the help of one of the Feminist Art Movement’s key founders.”
The newly released Dialogue Portal Part IV, “Transforming Curriculum,” as well as Part III, “What about Men?” — which was released in fall 2015 and addresses the often-controversial subject of men in a feminist environment — highlight talks from guest speakers Andrew Perchuk, deputy director of the Getty Research Institute, and William Catling, professor at Azusa Pacific University. Part I, “An Invitation from Judy Chicago,” and Part II, “Difference in Studio Art Teaching: Applying Judy Chicago’s Pedagogical Principles,” were released in 2014.
These four dialogue portals provide wide-ranging, ongoing conversation among art educators on the importance of feminist art pedagogy that Chicago, an artist, educator and author, envisioned. Chicago believes that “the pedagogy of feminist art contains lack of clarity, contradicting definitions and practices, and media-induced confusion about the word feminism.” Chicago’s mission is to work through the confusion using the digital dialogue portal to create a new work on the subject of feminist art pedagogy that is both clear and collective.
The University Libraries’ Eberly Family Special Collections Library received Chicago’s collection in 2011 as a gift from Chicago and the Through the Flower organization for the benefit of Penn State’s art education program. It has become known as one of the most notable private collections of archival materials on feminist art education, containing documents, audio-video materials, photographs and teaching notes on Chicago’s various teaching projects.
Penn State’s “The Dinner Party” Curriculum Project, another part of Chicago’s archive at Penn State, along with the Judy Chicago Dialogue Portal, works toward creating a worldwide forum for art educators and artists that participate in changing the future of art education at all levels.
For more information about the Judy Chicago Art Education Collection at Penn State, visit http://judychicago.arted.psu.edu.