National Museum of Women in the Arts

Purpose: Supporting Lifelong Learning The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) will use this grant to build Web-based access to the extensive database of women artists maintained in its Library and Research Center. This unique resource contains bibliographic and demographic information about more than 16,500 historic and contemporary women artists throughout the world. The Database Web Access Project has three primary goals: (1) to share significant components of the museum's archival resources with a worldwide audience; (2) to link the database to the museum's Web site and its online resources; and (3) to increase the visibility, reputation, and public awareness of women in the arts, past and present. The museum will achieve these goals through four interrelated initiatives: (1) building a technological infrastructure for the database, which users will access via the Internet; (2) developing and executing a pilot project to expand the database by adding information about a subset of 300 artists in NMWA's permanent collection; (3) mapping out a course of action for adding new artists to the database and their core materials to the archives; and (4) designing and executing a plan to promote the online database.