Written by Dear WAJ Friends & Readers,
Following our profoundly rewarding inaugural panel at last year’s CAA conference in New York, and honoring our late co-founding editor, Elsa Honig Fine, Woman’s Art Journal humbly invites proposals to our second annual session that will address topics of matronage, creative labor, and caregiving, to be held in Chicago, Feb. 18–21, 2026.
“Mothers, Makers, Matrons: Creative Labor and Caregiving at the Margins of Art”
Woman’s Art Journal welcomes proposals for our second annual conference session, dedicated to our late co-founding editor, Elsa Honig Fine, that interrogate acts of matronage (patronage), artmaking, and caregiving through the lens of women’s creative labor. Moving beyond biological and reproductive definitions, we consider “motherhood” a framework for examining how caretaking—emotional, practical, and artistic—shapes, supports, and sometimes stymies creative practices across professional and personal life stages. We seek contributions that address caregiving as a vital, historically undervalued labor within artmaking, art history, curating, and community-building. How do artists and art writers navigate the demands of caregiving—from motherhood through menopause, for self and others, and in queer/trans/femme kinship structures? How do these experiences inform aesthetic materials, subjects, working conditions, and modes of visibility?
This panel will expand definitions of motherhood by encompassing broader lived experiences of support, maintenance, disability, and survival through the voices of non-biological m/others and queer, trans/femme, lesbian, and nonbinary communities; by chronicling menopause; by tending to the ill or elderly; and by exploring care-work in roles as curators, collectors, and dealers. We invite scholars, artists, curators, and critics to submit papers that engage with these themes from historical, theoretical, and practice-based perspectives. Compelling presentations will reflect how care radically serves the creative lives of artists and cultural workers. By foregrounding mothering and caregiving as critical methodologies, our session aims to challenge dominant narratives of productivity and value in the art world and to elevate the creative capacities of women working at its margins.
Important Dates
- August 29: By this deadline, please use this link (or consult the collegeart.org website) to submit proposals, including presentation title, 250-word abstract, images (max 5), shortened CV, and 100-word comment on why the topic is a strong fit.
- September 16: Applicants notified of final decisions.
- Mid-October: CAA support grants open for conference participants.
- February 2, 2026: Accepted panelists upload presentations/papers to CAA “Speaker’s Corner.”
We greatly look forward to reading your proposals and convening a panel that contributes to the pathbreaking, creative, and feminist art-historical exchanges advocated by WAJ.
With gratitude,
Melissa Mednicov, Erin Devine, & Aliza Edelman, Co-Chairs