Ferris Olin

Ferris Olin (June 27, 1948, Trenton, New Jersey), the American feminist, scholar, art historian, curator, educator and librarian, founded and directed The Margery Somers Foster Center, part of the Rutgers University Libraries at the Mabel Smith Douglass Library (MSLD). She is best known for co-founding the Institute for Women and Art, Miriam Schapiro Archives on Women Artists, the Feminist Art Project and the Women Artists Archive National Directory with Judith K. Brodsky. She attended Rutgers University as an undergraduate and graduate student, where she served as a member of the faculty from 1976-2012; and has since been a Distinguished Professor Emerita. In these positions, she conceived and implemented initiatives that placed Rutgers at the center for research and scholarship on women’s leadership in the visual arts. From the beginning of her career, Olin was involved with the Women’s Movement. Between 1975 and 1976, Olin was the librarian for the Training Institute for the Sex Desegregation of the Public Schools, later known as Consortium for Education and Equity. Located at Douglass College, on the Rutgers New Brunswick campus, the Institute was a federally funded sex-equity assistance center serving public school educators and administrators in New Jersey, New York, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.