Celebrating Auckland Women on an Open Knowledge Platform

In November 2024, I was granted one of the Sheldon Werner Summer Studentship positions at Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum, joining a cohort of five Wikipedia students. I was new to editing and created a Wikipedia account for the first time. Tasked with developing content on Wikipedia related to Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland’s histories over this ten-week programme, I first needed to decide what my focus within Auckland’s histories would be. Fortunately, within the first few days of my studentship, I was introduced to the Women in Red movement and knew that I wanted my outputs to contribute to the commitments of this project.

The first article I wrote was on the Charlotte Museum, the only museum in the world dedicated solely to lesbian culture and history. Located in the heart of Auckland, on the vibrant Karangahape road, I was surprised that a page had not already been written about this distinctive space. However, I quickly discovered why this was the case – there was a huge lack of secondary sources available on the Charlotte Museum. Considering the nature of this highly unique institution, I thought I would be producing a thorough, detailed article covering its history, influence and legacy, but this was not to be the case. In fact, after attempting to use as many sources as possible but coming up with very few – and finding most information through links on the Charlotte Museum’s website – my article was flagged a short time after publishing for relying excessively on references to primary sources.

I was slightly discouraged, but it was an important lesson to learn that the lack of literature on underrepresented communities has a direct impact on efforts to produce open-access knowledge. It made me think, how am I supposed to get underrepresented stories out onto Wikipedia if there are so few sources written on these places, people or communities?

I decided that going forward, I would continue to draw primarily on my art history background and mainly dedicate articles on women artists and public art. Some of these articles were not particularly extensive, nor were they anywhere near a complete summation of people’s lives or artworks histories, but I felt empowered nevertheless in amplifying the visibility of artists on Wikipedia. I was able to edit and expand on Mary Wirepa’s page, correcting unsubstantiated and unsourced claims and contributing new information from sources previously unused on her page. I also provided a more substantial overview of the life and work of Lois White, highlighting her contributions as an artist more significantly.

I then turned my focus toward contemporary women artists who are from or practice in Auckland, knowing the contentious history of how contemporary artists are often undervalued, and how this can be especially true for women. I got my first C-class article from my article on Tyla Vaeau, a master tattooist (or Tufuga Tātatau). The final article that I completed for this internship was on the statue A Māori Figure in a Kaitaka Cloak which was the first public art commission awarded to a woman – Molly Macalister. Contributing accessible knowledge on esteemed women in our society and artworks that have been salient in Auckland’s history was not only rewarding but inspiring, knowing that writing such knowledge can generate new or expanded ideas on such topics in the future.

Wikipedia taught me the value of starting something. It doesn’t have to be perfect, and it doesn’t have to be complete, but sharing the information you do have freely is critical in ensuring that people have access to a vast range of information on their own histories, their own land, and the people and places that came before them.

Photograph of Ōwairaka, Statue of a Cloaked Woman, 2024