 Martha Richards FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Dear Friends, As many of you know, I started The Fund for Women Artists with a small group of friends at my kitchen table in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1995. As we start our fifteenth season, I feel truly blessed that I have been able to spend all these years doing work that I love so much. We now have almost 1,200 people visiting our website every day, and two years ago, when the first Support Women Artists Now Day took off, we learned how much can be accomplished when such a wonderfully diverse and talented group of women join forces. We had over 170 SWAN Day events in 14 countries this past March. The growing success of SWAN Day gives us hope that we can build a worldwide movement of women artists that will finally have the power to improve all of our lives. Since we plan to focus on expanding our community this year, we decided to adopt a new name. From now on The Fund for Women Artists will be doing business as WomenArts. Since our website has always been www.WomenArts.org, many of you already associate that name with us. Strong and clear, WomenArts conveys the new energy that we feel. Thanks so much to all of you, WomenArts is already living proof of Margaret Mead’s famous statement that “a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world.” With your help, the best is yet to come! Martha Richards Executive Director, WomenArts NEW WAYS TO CONNECT – The WomenArts Blog and Facebook Page To make it easier to share information, we have established the WomenArts Blog and a WomenArts – SWAN Day Fan Page on Facebook. We will be posting articles about current arts issues, as well as interviews with women artists and staff short takes about art featuring women. It will be easier for us to do a series of short blogs during the month instead of one long newsletter. We are also excited about giving all of you an opportunity to share your thoughts with our other readers by submitting comments on our blog or Facebook page. There are three ways for you to get our blog postings:
NEW SWAN DAY CALENDAR & OTHER WEB CHANGES COMING SOON! We are working on some new, streamlined software to make it easier to post your SWAN Day events this year. We hope to have the program online in early October, and we will send you more news about SWAN Day 2010 soon. We are working on a variety of other updates and additions to our website, and we will keep you informed as they are finished. We are trying to minimize any disruption in our services, but if you have problems accessing any pages on our site, please try back a little later. If the problems persist, please contact us to let us know about it. RECENT BLOG POSTINGS (https://www.womenarts.org/blog/) Surviving Joe McCarthy/Responding to Glenn Beck (Posted 9/14/09) – As we struggle to respond to attacks on the arts community and others by Fox News host Glenn Beck, what can we learn from artists who survived Joe McCarthy’s blacklisting in the 1950’s? Theatre Women Seek Equality(Posted 9/2/09) – Women playwrights, directors, and designers still receive fewer than 20% of the professional production opportunities nationwide. Theatre women in New York are organizing 50/50 in 2020 a ten year campaign to achieve parity for women in theatre. Short Takes The Grace Lee Project (9/4/09) – A very funny film debunking stereotypes of Asian-American women – Read More>> Estelle Parsons is Amazing in August: Osage County(9/4/09) – Read more>> OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS Watch Our Online Videos – We have posted several videos on YouTube including our SWAN Day interview with novelist Isabel Allende in San Francisco and the NBC News 4 New York coverage of SWAN Day at Lincoln Center. You can find them by searching for WomenArts at www.YouTube.com. Please send your comments and suggestions about this newsletter to: info@WomenArts.org. WomenArts is a community of artists and allies dedicated to celebrating and supporting art by and about women. For an overview of our programs and services, please see the About Us section of our web site. Your contributions make it possible for us to provide helpful free services like these newsletters. Please consider making a gift to support our work. Gifts of every size are greatly appreciated! |
WomenArts
Create. Connect. Change the World.
