The Women in Black Art Project is now in the
permanent archives of the Smithsonian Institution,
National Museum of American
History, Behring Center, Division of Politics and Reform.
Harry Rubenstein is the Curator of that Division. Should you wish to access the
Women in Black Art Project archives, please contact Mr. Rubenstein for
instructions on how to do that. The address is 14th and Constitution Avenues,
NW, Washington, DC 20560.
The Women in Black Art Project
archive at the Smithsonian contains the three costumes made by a collective of
artists in West Palm Beach, FL in the winter of 2001-2002. The first performance
with the costumes took place on the Mall in Washington, DC on March 8, 2002,
International Women's Day. Subsequently the costumes were used in peace
demonstrations at the UN in New York City, on Memorial Bridge in Washington, DC
on the first anniversary of the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon, in a procession honoring the murdered and abducted young women of
Juarez and Chihuahua in Mexice (2002) in Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, in Maine
and twice in Florida. The costumes were withdrawn from circulation when a
dispute emerged in the collective regarding whether or not to allow the costumes
to be used in Israel to protest the Israeli military occupation of the
Palestinian territories, and at the biennial conference of Women in Black in
Italy in opposition to the Iraq war. To see the costumes, please go to www.artwomen.org/archives. The archives also contain original
photographs of the vigils and performances in which the costumes were used,
press clippings, initial design drawings, videotapes of the artists' process in
deciding on the costumes' design and decoration, videotapes and CDs of events in
which the costumes appeared and an email colloquy between artist members of the
collective that made the art and Women in Black activists regarding the
reluctance on the part of some of the artists to allow the costumes to be used
in Israel and at the Women in Black conference in Italy in 2003.
