How to un-erase Black artists overlooked by history? Write their Wikipedia pages
Six years ago, Jina Valentine and Heather Hart decided they would rewrite the history of American art. Or, rather, revise that slightly: They would write the history of American art that should have been written the first time.
No, no, let me put that another way: They set out to write the history of American art that included the Black artists often at the margins of art history, if at all. Sorry, but to amend that slightly too: Jina Valentine of Chicago and Heather Hart of Brooklyn, New York, working with a legion of fellow artists, would not do all of this work themselves exactly.
They would edit it into Wikipedia. They would reassemble the history of American art using the online encyclopedia, adjusting and reworking, adding one new Black artist Wikipedia page at a time. And to do this they would invite artists, students, teachers — anyone inspired by their Wiki-correcting initiative — to help out.
Of course, filling the gaps in any historical record involves more than a digital tuck.
“But from an educational standpoint alone,” Hart told me, “if you consider generations growing up in front of screens now, this is the front lines of art history for a lot of people.”
Six years later, Valentine and Hart have introduced more than 1,200 entries on Black artists and institutions to Wikipedia, while modifying the existing entries of far more. For years, almost monthly, they have done this at Wiki edit-a-thons they’ve hosted, in schools and libraries and cafeterias, at the Chicago Athletic
Club and Studio Museum of Harlem, in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Sheboygan, Wisconsin, in South Africa and Alberta, Canada.
Their game plan is streamlined and direct: Each event tends to focus on artists associated with the place where the edita-thon is being held. A 2018 edit-a-thon at Museum of Contemporary Chicago, for instance, was a chance to write entries for Black artists whose work was shown at the MCA, yet somehow still didn’t have much online presence.
“To be honest, whenever I am searching an artist and end up on their Wikipedia page now, I tend to suspect this artist probably only has a page because of these Wikipedia edit sessions,” said Grace Deveney, a former MCA curator (now with the Prospect art triennial in New Orleans). “People might wonder why it