Founded in 1974, Women’s Studio Workshop (WSW) is a visual arts organization in upstate New York whose mission is to operate and maintain an artists’ workspace that encourages the voice and vision of individual women artists. WSW provides professional opportunities for artists at various stages of their careers, and promotes programs designed to stimulate public involvement, awareness, and support for the visual arts. WSW is equipped with specialized studios for printmaking, ceramics, letterpress printing, photography, and book arts. It provides residencies, classes, and other professional opportunities for women artists around the country. After the successful completion of a five-year capital campaign, WSW has significantly expanded its campus; it now features two renovated exhibition galleries, a book bindery, a climate-controlled archive for prints and artist’s books, and additional housing for visiting artists.
Women’s Studio Workshop
“The terrific range of project proposals we receive each year speaks to the mobile and porous disciplinary boundaries of contemporary art practice, and to the rich and inventive ways writers approach art today. They are alert to the urgent need to expand the conventions of art history and criticism with ideas from other discourses, such as black studies, transnational and diaspora studies, gender and women’s studies, and LGBT studies. The work of lesser known and overlooked artists and art communities continues to be mined, with writers articulating new ways to counter the striking imbalances of race, class and gender that continue to affect the arts and the culture industry.”