Caroline Woolard (born 1984) is an American artist [1] and organizer, whose work explores intersections between art and the solidarity economy. [2] She primarily works collaboratively and collectively and was a founding member of Trade School, OurGoods, BFAMFAPhD and the New York City Real Estate Investment Cooperative. [3] [4] [5] Woolard previously worked as an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the University of Hartford and a mentor at the School of Visual Arts. She is now working for Open Collective and Open Collective Foundation.
Woolard was born in Providence, Rhode Island. [1] She earned a BFA degree in 2006 from Cooper Union, which at the time was a tuition-free art school in New York City. [6]
Woolard's work explores solidarity economics, collaboration, barter, labor, and other forms of monetary and non-monetary exchange. [7] She makes sculptural objects that facilitate communication [8] and also co-creates systems of sharing and exchange. Woolard says that she became involved with social practice art not because she was against commercial or institutional art, but instead because she believes the art world is too isolated. [9] Woolard hopes to promote interdependence between artists. [4]
Our Goods (founded in 2008) is an online platform for resource sharing within the creative community. OurGoods received numerous awards, including support from the Rockefeller Cultural innovation Fund (2012-2014), the Economic Revitalization for Performing Arts grant from The Field (2009-2012), and a prominent space in Creative Time’s exhibition, Living as Form (2011). In 2016 the independent platform shut down and moved on to Facebook.
Trade School (founded in 2009) is an online platform that allows people to propose and sign up for classes which are paid for using barter. [4] Trade School chapters popped up in over 50 cities internationally. [8] Woolard feels that broadening art classes to those who would not traditionally be able to afford them will expand the world of art for the better. [9] As of 2018 there are 26 schools still linked on the website.
BFAMFAPhD (a mashed together acronym of BFA, MFA and PhD, founded 2014) is a research and advocacy project that uses US Census data to illuminate the ever-rising cost of getting a college art degree and its dubious relevance to the ability to make a living as an artist. [10] In addition to these economic concerns, Woolard and the other collaborators highlight problems of ethnic, racial and gender diversity in the art world. [11]
The New York City Real Estate Investment Cooperative (founded 2015 with lawyer/organizer Paula Segal and others) aims to collectively buy and maintain permanently affordable space in New York for civic, cultural, and cooperative use. [12]
Other works of art that Woolard has created are public seating, urban campsites and swings for subways. [13] In 2009, Woolard curated a "newspaper exhibition" which highlighted the many economic issues facing workers in the arts. [14] Woolard's Exchange Café was presented at the Museum of Modern Art as part of the Department of Education’s Artists Experiment initiative (2013). [15]
In trade, barter is a system of exchange in which participants in a transaction directly exchange goods or services for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. Economists distinguish barter from gift economies in many ways; barter, for example, features immediate reciprocal exchange, not one delayed in time. Barter usually takes place on a bilateral basis, but may be multilateral. In most developed countries, barter usually exists parallel to monetary systems only to a very limited extent. Market actors use barter as a replacement for money as the method of exchange in times of monetary crisis, such as when currency becomes unstable or simply unavailable for conducting commerce.
A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated related tools like scissors, carving implements, or hooks. It is a traditional main sector of craft making and applies to a wide range of creative and design activities that are related to making things with one's hands and skill, including work with textiles, moldable and rigid materials, paper, plant fibers, clay, etc. One of the oldest handicraft is Dhokra; this is a sort of metal casting that has been used in India for over 4,000 years and is still used. In Iranian Baluchistan, women still make red ware hand-made pottery with dotted ornaments, much similar to the 5000-year-old pottery tradition of Kalpurgan, an archaeological site near the village. Usually, the term is applied to traditional techniques of creating items that are both practical and aesthetic. Handicraft industries are those that produce things with hands to meet the needs of the people in their locality without using machines.
Peter Max is an American artist of German-Jewish origin, known for using bright colors in his work. Works by Max are associated with the visual arts and culture of the 1960s, particularly psychedelic art and pop art.
Economic anthropology is a field that attempts to explain human economic behavior in its widest historic, geographic and cultural scope. It is an amalgamation of economics and anthropology. It is practiced by anthropologists and has a complex relationship with the discipline of economics, of which it is highly critical. Its origins as a sub-field of anthropology began with work by the Polish founder of anthropology Bronislaw Malinowski and the French Marcel Mauss on the nature of reciprocity as an alternative to market exchange. For the most part, studies in economic anthropology focus on exchange.
Colab is the commonly used abbreviation of the New York City artists' group Collaborative Projects, which was formed after a series of open meetings between artists of various disciplines.
The feminist art movement in the United States began in the early 1970s and sought to promote the study, creation, understanding and promotion of women's art. First-generation feminist artists include Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, Suzanne Lacy, Judith Bernstein, Sheila de Bretteville, Mary Beth Edelson, Carolee Schneeman, Rachel Rosenthal, and many other women. They were part of the Feminist art movement in the United States in the early 1970s to develop feminist writing and art. The movement spread quickly through museum protests in both New York and Los Angeles, via an early network called W.E.B. that disseminated news of feminist art activities from 1971 to 1973 in a nationally circulated newsletter, and at conferences such as the West Coast Women's Artists Conference held at California Institute of the Arts and the Conference of Women in the Visual Arts, at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C..
Solidarity economy or Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) refers to a wide range of economic activities that aim to prioritize social profitability instead of purely financial profits. A key feature that distinguishes solidarity economy entities from private and public enterprises is the participatory and democratic nature of governance in decision-making processes as one of the main principles of the SSE sector. Active participation of all people involved in decision-making procedures contributes to their empowerment as active political subjects. However, different SSE organizational structures reflect variations in democratic governance and inclusive participation. Ultimately, SSE represents a crucial tool in guaranteeing that social justice ideals are upheld and that the wellbeing of the most vulnerable populations is paid attention to during the planning processes.
Mierle Laderman Ukeles is a New York City-based artist known for her feminist and service-oriented artworks, which relate the idea of process in conceptual art to domestic and civic "maintenance". She has been the Artist-in-Residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation. Her art brings to life the very essence of any urban center: waste flows, recycling, sustainability, environment, people, and ecology.
TradeArt was an underground art magazine first published by TradeArt Incorporated in March 1999. TradeArt began in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC just as artists were demanding more arts coverage in mainstream newspapers. With The Washington Star out of publication, a public not yet won over by The Washington Times, and USA Today offering mainly snippets of national news, The Washington Post was the area's leading news source. Artists had to compete for limited coverage of the arts and cultural events.
Australian feminist art timeline lists exhibitions, artists, artworks and milestones that have contributed to discussion and development of feminist art in Australia. The timeline focuses on the impact of feminism on Australian contemporary art. It was initiated by Daine Singer for The View From Here: 19 Perspectives on Feminism, an exhibition and publishing project held at West Space as part of the 2010 Next Wave Festival.
Alan W. Moore is an art historian and activist whose work addresses cultural economies and groups and the politics of collectivity. After a stint as an art critic, Moore made video art and installation art from the mid-1970s on and performed in the 1979 Public Arts International/Free Speech series. He has published several books and runs the House Magic information project on self-organized, occupied autonomous social centers. His partial autobiography was published in 2022 in The Journal of Aesthetics & Protest as Art Worker: Doing Time in the New York Artworld. Moore lives in Madrid.
Keri Rosebraugh is an American artist and art administrator. Her artworks often deal with ecological themes and focus on human being’s relationship with nature.
e-flux is a publishing platform and archive, artist project, curatorial platform, and e-mail service founded in 1998. The arts news digests, events, exhibitions, schools, journal, books, and art projects produced and/or disseminated by e-flux describe strains of critical discourse surrounding contemporary art, culture, and theory internationally. Its monthly publication, e-flux journal, has produced essays commissioned since 2008 about cultural, political, and structural paradigms that inform contemporary artistic production.
Interference Archive is a volunteer-run library, gallery, and archive of historical materials related to social and political activism and movements. Located in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, at 314 7th Street, with in the zip code 11215, its mission is "to explore the relationship between cultural production and social movements."
Anne Barlow is a curator and director in the field of international contemporary art, and is currently Director of Tate St Ives, Art Fund Museum of the Year 2018. There she directs and oversees the artistic vision and programme, including temporary exhibitions, collection displays, artist residencies, new commissions, and a learning and research programme. At Tate St Ives, Barlow has curated solo exhibitions of work by artists including Thảo Nguyên Phan (2022), Petrit Halilaj (2021), Haegue Yang (2020), Otobong Nkanga (2019), Huguette Caland (2019), Amie Siegel (2018) and Rana Begum (2018). She was also co-curator of "Naum Gabo: Constructions for Real Life" (2020) and collaborating curator with Castello di Rivoli, Turin for Anna Boghiguian at Tate St Ives (2019).
Christy Rupp is an American artist and activist.
Jasmine Wahi is a South Asian American curator, educator, and activist. Her work focuses on issues of femme empowerment, complicating binary structures within social discourses, and exploring multi-positional cultural identities through the lens of intersectional feminism. In addition to running Project for Empty Space, in Newark, NJ and curating international shows independently, Wahi teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and is currently the Holly Block Social Justice Curator of the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Wahi is a former board member of the South Asian Women's Creative Collective (SAWCC).
Joana Monolagi is a Fijian artist and masi maker, whose work is in the collection of Auckland Art Gallery. She was awarded the Pacific Heritage Art Award in 2015 at the Arts Pasifika Awards, recognising her work in supporting art and culture, her role as Fijian coordinator for the Pasifika Festival, and her own unique artistic practice. She is part of The Veiqia Project arts collective.
Video Gallery SCAN was the first Japanese art gallery exclusively dedicated to the exhibition, preservation, and promotion of video art. Founded in 1980 by the female performance artist and fog sculptor Fujiko Nakaya, SCAN was an independent, artist-run organization situated in Tokyo's Harajuku neighborhood. While small in scale, the Gallery was a multifunctional space whose services included a video distribution service, video archive & library, screening studio, and exhibition area.
Tina Rivers Ryan is an American curator, researcher, author, and art historian. Her expertise is in new media art, which includes digital art, and internet art. She has been an assistant curator at the Albright–Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York since 2017.