Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Joan Brown (artist)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Missvain (talk) 22:13, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Joan Brown (artist)

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Fails WP:BASIC, WP:ANYBIO, and WP:ARTIST. The article is based primarily on a primary source interview. Unable to locate any significant biographical details in secondary sources. Magnolia677 (talk) 18:42, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Artists-related deletion discussions. Magnolia677 (talk) 18:42, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Oklahoma-related deletion discussions. Magnolia677 (talk) 18:42, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete it is fairly easy to find sources for the California painter Joan Brown. However, based on a search for sources, the Joan Brown who is the subject of this article does not seem notable.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 18:54, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Even by the standards of 20th-century Oklahoman women artists, this person is incredibly obscure. It appears people might be working their way through the Oklahoma Native Artists Oral History Project at OSU and creating articles for everyone interviewed in that project? Those are primary sources, not secondary published sources indicating any degree of notability.Ahalenia (talk) 03:59, 22 November 2020 (UTC)Ahalenia[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Spiderone 10:06, 22 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

~~Delete~~ the chapter in the Broder book looks fine, but you can't base an article on only one decent secondary source. No luck in searches. There should be more articles on Native American women artists, but unfortunately this doesn't pass WP:GNG. Curiocurio (talk) 00:31, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Switch to Keep due to the excellent work done by Jooojay. A surprising and welcome rescue. Curiocurio (talk) 13:57, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep – this article needed more clean up in my opinion. I added a few new citations (it's now up to 14 sources) and I believe this passes WP:GNG now. It's hard to find sources because "Joan Brown" is a common name and a lot of the wrong sources show up, she does seem to have significant press and experience within the Native American museum scene and her alma mater Bacone College has a notable art program. She was mentioned in many sources as one of the well known artist from Bacone College, which I think fulfills WP:ARTIST. Jooojay (talk) 08:47, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment – There may be a COI issue with this article, I noticed one editor used a primary source from the University of Oklahoma interview and they went on to use more primary sources from that same publisher in many other article related to the arts and the museum. A notice was left on the talk page. Jooojay (talk) 09:41, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The Joan Brown who is the subject of this article is a well known Cherokee artist. Numerous sources confirm she was a leading artist among her peers in her prolific period[1],[2],[3] and being asked by Red Earth Festival to participate in the oral history project is clear indicator of her notability. She wouldn't have been asked to exhibit at the Cherokee National Museum [4] had her tribe not felt her work was exemplary. Being designated a Master Artist of the Five Civilized Tribes Museum is a significant award for Native artists.[5] Having pieces in major Native American galleries, collections, and museums is significant.[6][7][8][9] There is adequate information here to confirm that she is notable. (Given the time frame that she was prolific, and the closed nature of Native American art circles, major repositories like the collections at the Oklahoma State University, the University of Oklahoma, or Bacone College are the likely places one will find material on Native subjects. I have been unable to find archives of Muskogee, Tahlequah, or Tulsa newspapers which cover the 1970-1990 period, but those are far more likely to carry information on her than papers in Oklahoma City.) SusunW (talk) 15:19, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Every artist who exhibits gets written somewhere about but wp:artist provides clear notability requirements:

"The person is regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by peers or successors.

"The person is known for originating a significant new concept, theory, or technique.

"The person has created or played a major role in co-creating a significant or well-known work or collective body of work. In addition, such work must have been the primary subject of an independent and notable work (for example, a book, film, or television series, but usually not a single episode of a television series) or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews.

"The person's work (or works) has: (a) become a significant monument, (b) been a substantial part of a significant exhibition, (c) won significant critical attention, or (d) been represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums."

Which of these criteria apply to this artist? Ahalenia (talk) 16:13, 23 November 2020 (UTC)Ahalenia[reply]

Comment For the purposes of AFD, it is sufficient to pass the lower threshold of WP:GNG, which this artist clearly does. Curiocurio (talk) 18:58, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Visual arts-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 02:03, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per WP:HEY adding a dozen WP:RS to the original 2. Nice work @Jooojay: Theredproject (talk) 15:29, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - per the excellent research and improvemnt work of Jooojay, the artist passes WP:GNG. Netherzone (talk) 01:11, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - The improvements make this article a worthy encyclopedia entry with good sourcing and support. I would encourage previous reviewers to take another look.--Concertmusic (talk) 15:31, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep – this is an example where adding a tag like {{more refs}} would have been more appropriate first, especially if the proposer has difficultly finding references for a person with a common name. —Jonathan Bowen (talk) 17:26, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep-This article is worthy of keeping as Joan Brown in a significant Oklahoma artist. This page has been critiqued for using sources too closely connected with the state of Oklahoma and its universities. However, due to the regional nature of native art and the lack of nationwide focus, it is the state universities of the artist's home state who are most interested in collecting those stories. Mrs. Brown happens to be from Oklahoma and thus OU and OSU are most interested in her stories. While the original article did indeed focus heavily on a interview with Mrs. Brown, the article also included several books and newspaper articles, which conforms to Wikipedia's notability and proper source standards. The number of those secondary sources has since increased. Moreover, she has exhibited in several galleries, and so while she meets the lowest standard of notability, she is notable nonetheless. Though she has a common name and is not well known outside of Oklahoma, Joan Brown is a notable figure in the Oklahoma Native artist community and should not be excluded from Wikipedia for insignificant reasons. Yes, the author is trying to fill in the blanks of Native Artists in Oklahoma, however simply because these artists do not currently have Wikipedia pages does not mean they are insignificant. The goal of Wikipedia is to fill in those gaps and to easily share information with others. And many of the artists found in the Oklahoma Native Artists Project collection are indeed notable and found in many books, newspapers, and exhibition catalogs, which all meet Wikipedia's notability requirements. It is simply an issue of no one bothering to translate that information to Wikipedia until now. Claire.ringer (talk) 22:29, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.