Lola Van Wagenen

Lola Van Wagenen (born December 19, 1938) is an American historian and activist. In 1970, she co-founded Consumer Action Now (CAN), a non-profit educational organization.

In 1995 she co-founded Clio Visualizing History, Inc. to promote history education. (In 2003, Clio changed its corporate structure becoming a not-for-profit organization providing educational films and online history exhibits and resources.)

Biography

Van Wagenen was born in Provo, Utah. She was raised in a Mormon family, but as an adult has explored other sources of religious and philosophical thought.

She met her first husband, actor Robert Redford, in Los Angeles in 1957. They were married in Las Vegas on August 9, 1958. The couple had four children, one of whom died in infancy. Redford and Van Wagenen never publicly announced a separation or divorce, but in 1982, entertainment columnist Shirley Eder reported that the pair "have been very much apart for a number of years." In 1991, Parade magazine reported "it is unclear whether the divorce has been finalized." Many websites say they were divorced in 1985.

Van Wagenen received her bachelor's degree at Vermont College in 1982 and her master's degree in public history at New York University (NYU) in 1984. Ten years later, she completed her Ph.D. in American history at NYU. Her doctoral dissertation was published in 2003 as a book, Sister-Wives and Suffragists: Polygamy and the Politics of Woman Suffrage 1870–1896. In October 2012 she received the Distinguished Alumni/Alumnae Achievement Award from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at NYU.