Exhibitions help us understand the context in which artists and their works are presented to the public, but their role in art and visual culture history is often overlooked. Even some of the most important art events in and about Asia have limited representation on Wikipedia, or none at all.

Our virtual Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, co-presented by Asia Art Archive in America and PoNJA-GenKon, aimed to address this gap by bringing together participants to discuss, create, improve, and share Wikipedia articles about exhibitions in and about Asia. Aligned with Wikipedia Asian Month 2020, which addresses the underrepresentation of articles about Asia on Wikipedia, this event is part of an ongoing effort to contribute to the representation of art and visual culture in Asia on open-source knowledge platforms.

The Edit-a-thon began with a short introduction by PoNJA-GenKon co-director and art historian, Reiko Tomii, on the mission of their listserv group and the PoNJA Wikipedia Initiative (PWI) open call for fellowship applications (closed on November 25). Following this presentation, there was a thirty-minute Wikipedia editing tutorial led by the AAA-A team, with an opportunity for questions from participants.

View the results from this Edit-a-thon on our Wikipedia Event Dashboard and click here to learn more about articles that were newly added, edited, or translated by our participants in previous edit-a-thons. Asia Art Archive hosted a sister event in Hong Kong the following week.

PoNJA-GenKon is a listserv group established in March 2003. The acronym stands for Post-1945 (Nineteen forty five) Japanese Art Discussion Group / Gendai Bijutsu Kondankai. The goal of PoNJA-GenKon is to bring together specialists and professionals in the English-speaking world with interest in post-1945 Japanese art, and to offer a forum for interaction and debate on issues addressing postwar Japanese art and Japanese modernity. Since its inception, PoNJA-GenKon has grown to become a large international network of people with shared interests and passions. PoNJA-GenKon is a virtual community but it has created a physical presence through organizing and co-organizing conferences in collaboration with academic and art institutions.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.