Fonds LA.SC139 - Women's Art Resource Centre fonds

The Women's Art Resource Centre (WARC) was a non-profit, artist-run organization founded in 1984 in Toronto, Ontario, to combat the systemic erasure of women from art history and advance contemporary Canadian women's art practice. Co-directed by Linda Abrahams and Irene Packer during its formative era, WARC was run by a Board of Directors, staff, and volunteers. As a membership-based organization, members contributed to governance, programming, and strategic planning through committee work and annual meetings. Its committees included the Coordinating Committee, Documentation Facility Committee, Exhibition Assistance Committee, Publication Committee, Programming Committee, Personnel Policy Committee, Financial Committee, and the Development and Outreach Committee.

WARC initially operated out of small, shared office spaces alongside the Lesbian Archives of Canada (which later became part of The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives) where its primary focus was building the Curatorial Reference Library. This dedicated resource centre housed extensive documentation, photographic slides, and biographical files on Canadian women artists. By January 1985, WARC was working primarily out of 80 Spadina Avenue, situated next to the Canadian Women’s Movement Archives, before relocating to 183 Bathurst Street in 1986 to accommodate its growing library and membership. In the late 1980s, the Centre established its administrative offices and Library at 394 Euclid Avenue in Suites 308 and 309. It was not until 1998 that it moved into its final location at 401 Richmond St. West.

As the organization grew, it became increasingly aware of the limited opportunities available for women artists to exhibit their work, particularly in solo exhibitions. This led to an expansion of its mandate to include exhibition programming, beginning with the creation of its first gallery space, Walls of WARC. Active from 1992 to 1997, Walls of WARC was a modest exhibition space consisting of a single wall within WARC’s office. However, major changes in government funding frameworks eventually made the establishment of a formal gallery space necessary for continued access to public funding. The move to 401 Richmond St. West facilitated the creation of a proper exhibition space known as the WARC Gallery. The WARC Gallery featured visual, media, and performance art by Canadian and international artists while promoting cross-cultural dialogue and exchange through partnerships with visual arts festivals, educational institutions, and foreign consulate offices.

WARC also developed a national profile through its publications, conferences, advocacy initiatives, and artist networks. Major conferences organized or co-organized by WARC include Feminism and Art (1987), Empowerment and Marginalization (1990), The Status of Canadian Women in the Arts (1994), Crossing Borders, Mapping Boundaries (1997) (in collaboration with Women’s Caucus for Art), 20/20 Vision: Seeing Our Way Through Change (2004), and Mapping Cultural Time Zones (2005) (in collaboration with the Goethe Institut). From 1990 to 1999, it published Matriart magazine, a print quarterly that provided women artists with a platform for feminist art critique, theory, and cultural exchange. It also conducted a 1994 landmark survey of gender representation at the National Gallery of Canada entitled “Who Counts and Who’s Counting,” a 2001 collaboration with Kellogg Canada to produce and distribute the national calendar “Celebrating Canadian Women Artists,” and “World Wide WARC,” a website and interactive digital portal designed to digitize portions of the Library and connect women artists directly with a global audience.

Reductions in public arts funding beginning in the late 1990s led to ongoing financial instability. Unable to overcome these systemic funding cuts, WARC ultimately dissolved in 2015.