Conversation with Althea Greenan at the Women's Art Library, London, 2002

In the conversation, Althea Greenan, curator of the Women’s Art Library (WAL) originally known as the Women Artists Slide Library, reflects on the feminist origins of the archive: “The whole point of this archive, from when it was just a box of slides, was to amass evidence of women’s work—and that was a feminist project.” Greenan recounts how the WAL began in the late 1970s, founded by women artists from the Artists’ Union who sought to make visible the presence of practicing women artists through slide collections. A volunteer art historian broadened the WAL’s scope by gathering slides of historical women artists to support teaching and lectures. Though born from feminist activism, Greenan emphasizes that not all works in the collection are explicitly feminist. Over time, the archive grew to encompass contemporary artists and groups across Europe, such as the International Women Artists Association and the Swedish group called 50/50.

Greenan observes that today’s younger artists and researchers approach the archive through material curiosity rather than theory: “They’re trying to create their own work. You could just feel that they’re searching for something that speaks to them.” They might, for instance, ask who has ever worked with gloves. This focus on process and material, she suggests, continues the feminist legacy of the WAL: valuing lived experience, experimentation, and the everyday as legitimate forms of artistic inquiry.

When funding was cut, the Women’s Art Library temporarily rebranded as MAKE, producing catalogs, books, and Women’s Art Magazine (1983–2002). Despite this transition, Greenan maintains that the WAL has always been more than a library: “It was about interacting with artists and collecting artists documentation, which is quite a different thing to what you get as an art, a byproduct of the art scene.” Focused on ephemera, slides, and overlooked documentation, it preserves the material vitality of women’s art practices and remains an accessible resource for those unable to find this information elsewhere. “I’m trying to think of a term that encompasses all of that, a history and the current practice.” Greenan further characterizes the preservation of women artists’ work as a commitment to keeping feminist histories visible for future generations.: “People come here because they can’t find the information anywhere else…I’ve never doubted that it needed to be done.”