{"id":2315,"date":"2012-01-09T20:18:55","date_gmt":"2012-01-10T01:18:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.conservators-converse.org\/?p=2315"},"modified":"2012-01-09T20:18:55","modified_gmt":"2012-01-10T01:18:55","slug":"artists-records-in-the-archives-a-two-day-symposium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/2012\/01\/09\/artists-records-in-the-archives-a-two-day-symposium\/","title":{"rendered":"Artists’ Records in the Archives: A Two-Day Symposium"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last fall, I attended an exciting two-day symposium in New York City titled \u201cArtists\u2019 Records in the Archives<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 Presented on October 11-12, 2011 by the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, the symposium highlighted something I knew little about: the presence of works of art in many archival collections.\u00a0 Simply put, the dualism between art and its archival traces is no longer valid.\u00a0 The goal of this conference was to start a dialogue that can address the ways in which archival concepts and practices must be updated and refined in light of this change.<\/p>\n

Much that was discussed was relevant for conservators.\u00a0 Choosing the appropriate category (library, archives, art, special collections) for a work has implications for its accessibility, preservation, resource allocation, and value for insurance purposes.\u00a0 As such, transparent methods and principles for this categorization must be developed.\u00a0 Archiving and preservation strategies for works created in multimedia and emerging media must also be explored. Archivists are interested in establishing best practices and guidelines for categorizing works, and establishing some objective criteria.\u00a0 They are agreed that archivists must work more closely with curators and conservators over time to periodically examine the institution\u2019s holdings to ensure that works are properly categorized and cared for.\u00a0 The lesson for scholars engaged in research is that art collections, archives, and libraries do not have tidy boundaries.<\/p>\n

Speakers included Ann Butler (Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard<\/a>) who spoke about the blurring line between \u201cart\u201d and \u201carchives,\u201d and how some objects that were once considered documentation are now exhibited as art. \u00a0She went on to discuss how this presented challenges for categorizing objects.\u00a0 Marvin Taylor (Fales Library & Special Collections, NYU) chose specific items from the Downtown collection<\/a> (post-1975 New York) to illustrate the same problem \u2013 what is \u201cart\u201d and what is \u201cdocument\u201d?\u00a0 Examples included street art documentation, and artists\u2019 notes and drawings on correspondence in the archives.\u00a0 Chrissie Iles (Whitney Museum of American Art) discussed how, as time passes, archival materials may migrate toward status as art objects.\u00a0 She pointed out that recent art movements make definitions of art objecthood elusive.\u00a0 In the absence of an object, such as in the case of performance art\/time-based works, photo documentation stands in for the art event, so these kinds of documents are often collected and exhibited as art objects themselves.<\/p>\n

Other topics covered by this symposium included how to preserve, process, manage, and make artists\u2019 records accessible to researchers.\u00a0 Digitization of archives and preservation and accessibility of born-digital materials were also explored.\u00a0 There were many wonderful speakers on these topics, but in particular, Sally Brazil (The Frick Collection and Frick Art Reference Library), Julia Feldman (MoMA), and Erin Murphy (Harvard Art Museums) all gave very exciting talks about their experiences with processing and managing artists\u2019 records in their archives.\u00a0 Ms. Brazil spoke about the Frick family archive<\/a>, Ms. Feldman about the Fluxus archive<\/a>, and Ms. Murphy described the processing of the Alfonso Ossorio archive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Erin Kinhart described the massive digitization project of 118 collections in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art<\/a>. Charles Duncan highlighted several important collections of artists\u2019 records that have already been digitized, including the Louise Nevelson papers, papers of the Photorealists (Audrey Flack, et al), the Jack Stewart graffiti archive, Jimmy Ernst\u2019s papers (son of Max Ernst), letters pertaining to the Armory show, etc. Megan McShea spoke about artists\u2019 audiovisual records, which are at particular risk for irreparable damage if not conserved, due to the inherent fragility of the media.<\/p>\n

It was interesting to hear about the many different kinds of archives, from public to private, large to small, and everything in between.\u00a0 Andrew Martinez (Rhode Island School of Design) shared some examples from the RISD archive<\/a>, an institutional and teaching archive that contains many original student art works, such as the student work of noted photographer Francesca Woodman. Her transcripts, application materials, artist statements, essays, and exhibition documentation can help scholars establish a timeline for her work and better understand her developing vision.\u00a0 By contrast, Allison Hemler (The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation<\/a>) works at an archive devoted to one artist, Felix Gonzales-Torres, and generally speaking there are no discrete art objects in collections. Owners of installation work by Gonzalez-Torres receive a Certificate of Authenticity and a guidelines sheet. Every installation is unique, thereby resisting monumentalization of the art object.<\/p>\n

The symposium concluded with a session on the subject of born-digital archive materials and art works, and a discussion of how to ensure access to artists\u2019 records created today with emerging technologies. \u00a0Social media and web archiving was discussed, and Dennis Moser<\/a> (University of Wyoming) showed examples of the far fringe of digital arts \u2013 performance works done solely online, in virtual worlds \u2013 which perhaps illustrate best of all the particular challenges of preserving digital art.<\/p>\n

This overview can but scratch the surface of what was discussed.\u00a0 For me, I gained a new appreciation for the field of archives and preservation, and I am excited by the new directions for collaboration between archivists and conservators.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last fall, I attended an exciting two-day symposium in New York City titled \u201cArtists\u2019 Records in the Archives.\u201d\u00a0 Presented on October 11-12, 2011 by the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, the symposium highlighted something I knew little about: the presence of works of art in many archival collections.\u00a0 Simply put, the dualism between … Continue reading “Artists’ Records in the Archives: A Two-Day Symposium”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecpn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}