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Black Lunch Table

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About Black Lunch Table

Black Lunch Table (BLT) is a nonprofit organization and sixteen-year ongoing artist collaboration. BLT’s primary aim has been the production of discursive sites, wherein cultural producers engage in dialogue on a variety of critical issues.

Black Lunch Table Wikimedians mobilize the creation and improvement of a specific set of Wikipedia articles that pertain to the lives and works of Black artists. In the field of mainstream contemporary art, Black artists are still marginalized within our field.

Wikipedia estimates that 77% of their editors are white and 91% of their editors are men. Our work shifts this demographic and empowers people to write their own history. Our sessions and events, including BLT Photobooth and edit-a-thons, equip new editors with the skills and resources to create, update, and improve Wikipedia articles and encourages existing editors to focus on Wikipedia knowledge gaps.

Objectives

  • To increase the reach, connection with communities, and presence of Wikimedia especially as it pertains to gaps of Black visual artists.
  • Increase Wikimedia understanding, editorship, articles and article quality.
  • To afford more new editors one-on-one attention, access to training and help them get the editing bug, fostering return editors.
  • Increase visibility of marginal populations on Wikimedia through edit-a-thon events, online meetups, a photo initiative and other creative approaches.

Activities

This six-month-long fellowship will culminate with an exhibition at Pace’s New York gallery to mark Black History Month in February 2023. The first appointed fellow, Kristen Owens, will create a new bibliographic text based on her research into the Black American and Black diasporic artists in Pace’s history.

Kristen Owens is a librarian, curator, and arts educator whose interdisciplinary research, writing, and curatorial work is situated in African American and Black Diasporic studies. She is currently Librarian for African American and Black Diaspora Studies at New York University Libraries. From 2019 to 2022, Owens worked as Associate Curator at Paul Robeson Galleries at Express Newark, Rutgers University, and from 2018 to 2019 she was Coordinator of Public Programs, Education, and Engagement at Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. Owens holds a bachelor’s degree in Fashion Studies from Montclair State University, a master’s degree in Library and Information Science from Long Island University, and a master’s degree in Visual Culture from New York University.

You can read more about the fellowship, exhibition, and events.

Upcoming events

Black Lunch Table hosts both online and IRL events. We have online events that both offer community and sessions that focus on editing, artists, and education.

See schedule below with more info available on our Wiki Meetup Page.

  1. March 27th, 2024: BLT @ University of Pennsylvania Fisher Fine Arts Library, Philadelphia, PA
  2. March 24th, 2024: BLT Office Hours, online
  3. April 28th, 2024: BLT Office Hours, online
  4. May 26th, 2024: BLT Office Hours, online
  5. June 23rd, 2024: BLT Office Hours, online
  6. July 28th, 2024: BLT Office Hours, online
  7. August 25th, 2024: BLT Office Hours, online
  8. September 22nd, 2024: BLT Office Hours, online
  9. October 27th, 2024: BLT Office Hours, online
  10. November 24th, 2024: BLT Office Hours, online

BLT: Live on IG: Artists are central to all facets of BLT. As exhibitions and freelance work are canceled due to the virus, what we can do to support the continuation of the archive we depend on is ask and compensate artists as they share and commune with us through a series of online “talks”. Noon, EST. Find them on IG Live @blacklunchtable.

Topic Focus and Online Edit-a-thons: Join us for online Wikipedia editing and assistance. Help record history as it unfolds by updating related Wikipedia articles, editing know-how is not necessary. In addition to regular editing together, Topic Focus sessions will feature experts on WikiEDU, editing on mobile devices, Wikidata, and Spanish language editing. All skill levels are welcome! Noon, EST.

Play BLT BINGO: BLT BINGO is a contest series that celebrates the work of artists by working to increase information about them on Wikimedia platforms and increasing editors' fluency with all the Wiki platforms. New cards and prizes are released each month.

Missed any of our BLT Live or Topic Focus sessions? You can watch all of them

Contact information

Join us!

Feel free to add your name to the list below if you are interested in participating! More information!

Key contacts

Other BLT editors

Affiliations Committee Resolutions

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