Course:ARST573/Archives - Fine Arts

The term fine art historically referred to painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and poetry. In a modern context, it often includes film, photography, conceptual art, and printmaking as well. For some people, fine art is a term used in direct contrast, and as a way to provide distinction from, applied art or decorative art. Therefore, the term visual art is more inclusive as it allows for many different forms of art to be present in the same archival repository. Visual arts include, but art not limited to, ceramics, drawing, printmaking, painting, sculpture, photography, video and filmmaking, architecture, industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design and decorative art.

Archives that primarily deal with visual arts have, like personal archives in general, often been understudied or even ignored altogether. Only relatively recently, with the more wide-spread acceptance and study of personal archives, visual arts archives have begun to receive more scholarly attention. Visual arts archives are also closely aligned with museum archives.

Introduction to Visual Arts and Artists' Archives

Collections Storage Archives of American Art

Pictorial representations conveying information predates text-based language, but the two remained closely tied to one another for many centuries. It was not until the Renaissance that image and texts began to be seen as entirely separate and "developed quite literally along their own lines." It was this environment which designated images as "works of art," and text as documents. Brian S. Osborne, Professor Emeritus at Queen’s University, says that art should be seen as "a documentation and an interpretation of the society which it is a part and upon which it provides commentary.”

Matthew Reason, Professor of Theatre at York St. John University, has suggested that the need to document and archive work is based, at least in part, on the idea that objects of legitimate research and study must leave behind researchable residue. The art world at large has often been guilty of promoting the belief that without documentation, and subsequent publicizing, an artist cannot gain a true professional persona or popularity.

To date, visual art or artists' archives have not received much attention in archival studies. Special Collections Archivist at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Amy Furness, suggests that the reason for this lack of attention is that personal archives of all types have only in the last 15 or so years been given the focus and study they deserve. It has been suggested that this lack of study likely stems from personal archives not fitting into the traditional definition of records as evidence of a transaction. In addition, the lack of attention paid to personal archives undoubtedly is connected to the fact that two of the most prominent English-speaking archival theorists, Hilary Jenkinson and Theodore Schellenberg, completely dismissed them as unimportant or outside the scope of "true" archival records.

Images can sometimes capture what textual records do not. Art has proven useful to varied professions and scholars with a wide array of research objectives. In addition, non-textual records can sometimes provide the only evidence of a culture, people, or individual; and art can reveal information, even "mundane information," about past societies and behaviors which previously eluded scholars.

Traditional archivists take the view that visual arts or artists' archives, also sometimes called fine arts archives, do not fit the prerequisites to be considered true records. Since archives are commonly conceived as only containing records, this issue is not insignificant. However, there is no one, universally-agreed-upon-definition of a record. Meryl C. Crayton, a graduate of Western Washington University's MA program, states that "The record is not static but an ever changing and evolving construction."

In opposition to Jenkinson, Schellenberg, or other strict qualifications of what a record must consist of, British archival theorist and honorary researcher at University College London Geoffrey Yeo defines an archival record as “persistent representations of activities, created by participants or observers of those activities or by authorized proxies.” Yeo's definition allows for visual art archives to fit into archival repositories without causing a redefining of archival record holdings. Specifically, the ubiquitous presence of photographs in modern archives - although this was an issue of much controversy for a time - show that images are not incompatible with traditional archival principles (i.e., original order, provenance, and contextual description). Likewise, the influential and noted British archivist Hugh Taylor points out that a "paper-only archive" has long been surpassed by the multimedia archive. Although the term "iconography" is sometimes used, certain media records, including paintings, drawings, prints, posters, and more, still lack even an agreed-upon term in archives. Regardless, despite the lack of archival literature on the subject, many archives already contain visual art.

Archive or Museum/Gallery?

Visual art archives are most commonly acquired by a larger institution, such as an art museum, a university, or a national/regional repository. Only in such cases of an archive by an artist with national or international renown would there be the possibility of a separate and dedicated holdings in the form of part of a foundation or museum. Despite this, many archives contain small museums, while many museums often manage their own archives.

What holdings should be held in an archive, and which should be considered part of a museum or gallery collection is another issue some archivists are starting to explore. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines a "museum" as "a repository for the preservation and exhibition of objects illustrative of antiquities, natural history, fine and industrial art, or some particular branch of any of these subjects." The OED defines "archives" as "a place in which public records or other important documents are kept." However, where the line is to be drawn is not always so black and white.

Crayton suggests that "documentary art" or "representational art which records, consciously or unconsciously, past ideas, activities, and/or environments fashioned from direct observation and/or participants in the displayed subject material" should be held in archives. For Crayton, archives are "obligated" to preserve the historical value of the iconography within art." Crayton supports the Senior Art Archivist at the National Archives in Kew Eva Major-Marothy's assertion that art galleries and museums are unconcerned with historical data in art due to their preoccupation with the development of art. Hugh Taylor stresses that a more clear definition of the roles of archives and art galleries as repositories is needed, in order to avoid the galleries/museums to retain "all that is excellent" and leaving the archives to deal with "second rate" artworks.

Greg Spurgeon, Chief Collections Manager at the National Gallery of Canada, explains the high stakes of figuring out where various art pieces should be held: "We should recognize that in any collection of art, be it historical or archival, both form and content are significant, and that it is necessary to keep this in mind when defining an explicit scope and direction for our collections. If the view is too narrow, a documentary art archives is likely to end up being little more than a sad accumulation of dark-suited portraits and Currier-and-Ives prints, whereas an art gallery collection will run the risk of being a hollow pageant with selections dictated by arbitrary external, as opposed to culturally-rooted, criteria."

Spurgeon calls art galleries, museums, and archives "fellow travellers" who need to coordinate and cooperate more. For him, the archivist, curator, and art historian all should play a more cooperative role in providing a better, and more full understanding of an artwork, regardless of its classification as documentary art or fine art. As a result, Spurgeon believes that this "fuller use of the historical perspective" will result in the possible "rescue" of artists, art works, or art movements from the "oblivion imposed by a national or international art world's 'superstar' mentality." He ends by stating that: "By collecting pictorial art, the art museum and the visual arts archives preserve, with different foci, the active visual memory, and in making these collections accessible and understandable they pursue a common goal which, simply stated, is visual literacy."

Information Standards Specialist Katherine Timms agrees with Spurgeon's call for cooperation between archives and museums/galleries, but adds libraries to the list. Timms says that in today's "digital realm," the "the traditional boundaries between various cultural heritage institutions – archives, libraries, and museums – have become blurred." Nancy Elkington defines cultural heritage institutions, sometimes called "memory institutions," as working to "identify, collect, preserve, describe and make available the artifactual, intellectual and artistic products of the past and present in order that current and future generations may benefit from them." Timms believes that "[r]esearchers are more likely to care about having access to a resource than knowing who owns it." As such, she posits that integrated, on-line access systems are needed in order to create "a meeting point where digital collections from all three types of cultural heritage institutions can intersect and coexist" is needed.

Issues for Visual Arts Archives

Authenticity

Jenkinson's description of authenticity included an "unbroken" chain of custody. However, today, few records fit this requirement in the strictest sense. This is even more true in reference to visual arts archives. It is quite common for accessions of archival art collections to come in with little, or no, information regarding context, origin, or authorship. Although it is true that this issue arises in art galleries and museums too, it is less of a functional issue for these repositories as it is for an archive. Another issue that may arise that calls into question the authenticity of a work, or a specific aspect, is when a historical subject has been commissioned, usually with a purpose in mind. Some question what value, if any, a commission such as this has as an historical document? Therefore, the object may be authentic, but the information might not be. There are varying views as to whether any information should be viewed as relevant, or trustworthy, in works with these proven biases or propagandized intentions.

Forgeries

Archives and art museums/galleries both have been victims of forgeries. However, in the case of archives, it is not necessary that the item forged has an intrinsic value, as long as it has an informational or evidentiary one. However, as Rodney G.S. Carter, the archivist for the St. Joseph Region of the Religious Hospitallers in Kingston, Ontario, explains in his article "Tainted Archives: Art, Archives, and Authenticity," "If archival records are falsified, documents that have little apparent market value can lead to illicit gains."

In many cases archival records are what are used to prove artistic provenance of visual artworks. For this reason, they are vulnerable to falsification, manipulation, forgery, or theft. In the art world, where authenticity is valued even more than archives, and often deals with much higher monetary stakes than archives, a document or series of documents that appears to provide a "solid provenance" can be seen as a "powerful piece of testimony that goes a long way in determining artistic authenticity." Add to this that documentary proof of an artwork's provenance is "frequently incomplete, fragmentary, vague, and very rarely conclusive on its own," and it becomes even more clear why a forged document could mean the difference between a piece being worth very little or nothing, to being valued and sold for millions. Carter reminds his reader that "Archivists must be on guard for more than just theft and vandalism."

Carter's article focuses on the case of John Drewe and the artist John Myatt. Drewe was a con man who, for over the course of a decade, inserted fraudulent documents into various British art archival institutions in order to fabricate provenance for as many as 200 forged artworks. Although much less elaborate in his method of deceit, no less fascinating is the case of Mark A. Landis.. Landis created false documentation and provenance for his own forged artworks. However, for Landis, his reasons were never for monetary gain.

Mixed Intentions

One of the many issues a visual arts archives may face is that a curator and an archivist's intentions may be at direct odds with each other. This can be further complicated by the artist's intentions. The multiple personalities, intentions, and priorities may often result in contrasting and contradicting end goals.

Provenance

Providing an accurate and complete history of provenance to a visual arts piece is not always easy. Sometimes very little information has been retained, including the custodial history, the date, what is depicted, or even the artist themselves can be unknown. Because archives are reliant on provenance, this can create major issues in arranging and describing a visual artwork within the predefined archival database constraints.

Independent information management consultant Laura Millar's controversial article, "The Death of the Fonds and the Resurrection of Provenance: Archival Context in Space and Time," calls for a re-examination of archival provenance. Millar says that archivists should look to archaeology and museology for an expanded definition of provenance. In so doing, she champions a "focus on a new vision, not of respect des fonds, but of respect de provenance," to better encompass "creator history," "records history," and "custodial history." Focusing specifically on the concept of provenance in relation to art, Millar says that "Artistic provenance is not the history of the creator of the object but of the object itself." Likewise, artistic provenance "traces the movements of a work of art over time and space in order to ensure its integrity." In contrast, she believes, archives do not often provide or record such a detailed history of the object itself. Millar believes that archivists would do well to look more closely to an artistic, as well as archaeological, concept of provenance, in order to embrace the idea of archives containing "only fragments of a larger story, part of a journey" and get away from what she believes is a false conception of a fonds as a "whole".

Creativity vs. Order

As might be expected, creative and spontaneous personalities does not always go hand-in-hand with well-organized record-keeping practices. However, some artists, such as Edvard Munch, take an almost-obsessive interest in keeping and preserving sketches, drawings, notes, or finished pieces. Likewise, some artists do recognize the importance in keeping as many parts as possible together, such as was the case with J.M.W. Turner, who, upon his death in 1851, bequeathed his sizable collection and contents of his studio to the British nation, with one of the stipulations that they be kept in one collection.

Preservation

The preservation of archival materials that falls under their institutional mandate is a crucial concern for every archivist. Although all archives are increasingly becoming multimedia repositories, visual arts archives may have to deal with caring for and preserving an even greater variety of material types.

Copyright Use and Restrictions

Visual arts archives are often of great consequence in relation to copyright use and restrictions. Outside of a general discussion of archives and copyright and Freedom of Information issues, Australian archivists Emily Hudson and Andrew T. Kenyon, although writing in the specific context of Australia, analyze how copyright law can also have a major effect on what material is digitized and made accessible.

Context

Providing context for any archival record is crucial to following the archival principles of respect des fonds and original order. However, it has been argued by Meryl C. Crayton, and other archivists, that context is even more important in relation to images/visual arts. Crayton states that, "Context is not only necessary for accurately reading images, then, it is also the vehicle by which archivists provide access and unlock the historical data held in images." Crayton believes that archivists need to develop more of a visual literacy and knowledge of artists, artistic styles, periods, movements, etc., in order to better "unlock" this data for public consumption.

"Documentary Surrogates" and Documentation

Modern and contemporary art has embraced the idea of impermanence. While this evolution has been important in various art forms, it has greatly complicated the issue of archiving an artist's, or artists', work(s). Photograph archivist Katrina Windon says that this "ephemeral art" has resulted in the creation of "documentary surrogates." Windon uses University of Michigan's iSchool professor Margaret Hedstrom and digital archivist Anna Perricci's idea that the true "original" is the artist's thought and intention, and not the physical creation, in order to explain that documentary surrogates are not such a radical idea as they might first appear.

She goes on to say: "Certainly, if artists involve themselves in the process of surrogate creation, there is something to be said for the idea that the resultant product is, in some way, an original, in the way that a literary translation is, despite being a derivative work, still a unique original. Surrogates may be less valued than original pieces due to mankind’s privileging of the original and the art world’s obsession with authenticity, a concern which itself often contributes to the depth of documentation on a work."

Documentary surrogates can be placed into three main categories, based on the intention of their creation and use: 1. reinterpretations or reproductions, 2. administrative data or works made in the natural course of creation, or 3. work created with the intention of preserving the "spirit of the work" for future viewers and/or posterity (often artist's self-documentation). Documentary surrogates can include, but are not limited to, photographs, video, interviews, exhibition brochures, museum catalogs, news articles, press releases, artists' statements, donation records, schemata, and notes intended for the artist's own use.

Another important form of documentation, identified by Windon, is third-party documentation. Whether this type of documentation is authorized or otherwise, it may provide the best or only record of some works. Likewise, a form of documentation which has yet to be embraced, or even largely accepted, is viewer documentation; such as a viewer's personal photographs of an artwork or exhibition.

Today's technology has allowed for even more forms of documentation of an artist's work, including websites, videos with commentary, blogs, models, online exhibits, virtual walkthroughs, audio guides, virtual reality projects, and more. There is still some controversy regarding the use, or the extent of usage, of replicas in exhibitions. Windon makes clear that surrogate documentation is not to be used, or viewed, as a way to avoid preservation. Instead, she says,"...it is a redirection of effort where traditional forms of preservation cannot be applied."

American Fine Arts Archives

In 1988, the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, administered by the United Nation's organization, was the first in the United States to recognize the "right of attribution," i.e. the right for an artist to be identified with their works, and the "right of integrity," i.e. the right of an artist to protect their work from "modification and destruction." Two years later, building upon the Berne Convention, the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) was passed by the US Congress and established moral rights for artists independent of economic rights. The two legislations are important to fine arts archives, and artists in general, because of the distinct shift from US copyright law's usual primary concern with economic rights.

Peter H. Karlen, intellectual property lawyer and a critic of VARA, praises its intentions, but says that the act is too ambiguous in its definition of "visual arts." Most notably, he says, VARA leaves out any mention of audiovisual works or maps. In addition, Karlen criticizes VARA's lack of adequate provisions for joint works and its omission of any discussion concerning rights passed on to an artist's heirs.

Canadian Fine Arts Archives

In Canada, institutions such as Library and Archives Canada, the National Gallery of Canada, or numerous provincial and university archives all collect visual art archives. This inclusion in Canadian archival repositories is largely a consequence of the total archives system's national prevalence. The "total archives" system in Canada brought together government/corporate records and personal archives/private manuscripts under the mandate of the same institution.

The Public Archives of Canada (est. 1872) and the National Gallery of Canada (est. 1880) are products of an increase in nationalistic sentiments that directly followed the Confederation of Canada. In 1874, the Secretary of State created the role of Keeper of the Records to preserve official government documents. In 1903, the two roles of Archivist and Keeper combined as the Dominion Archivist within the Department of Agriculture, following a recommendation of a Commission on Public Records of 1898. However, despite the good intentions, the government did not provide any encouragement, direction, or financial support. for the Dominion Archivist. The Public Archives Act of 1912 made the Archives a separate department reporting to the Secretary of State and, in essence, a national department of history. The National Gallery Act of 1913 removed the Gallery from its problematic association with the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and defined its objectives as, essentially, the national department of fine arts.

Under Arthur Doughty's management, the Public Archives began to collect visual arts archives. By 1925, the Public Archives listed over twenty-five thousand pictorial archival records - consisting of mostly prints, but also oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, photographs, book illustrations. Doughty did more than just expand the holding parameters for the Public Archives, he also began to explore ways teachers might use the pictorial archives. Interestingly, it was a dispute over ownership of four paintings which caused a small issue between the Public Archives and the National Gallery, and separation between "documentary art" and "fine art." Luckily, this disagreement did not result in a long-term schism between the two organizations. Wilfred I. Smith, then Acting Dominion Archivist, wrote in a letter to the National Gallery's chief curator, Robert Hubbard, in August of 1970, that "...the National Gallery is concerned primarily with artistic excellence - items as works of art." Whereas, "the Public Archives is concerned primarily with contemporary visual representation - items as documentary evidence." Greg Spurgeon points out that these distinctions are not always so clear cut. Spurgeon believes that these instances of confusion are "not aberrations," but instead point out that because both institutions collect pictorial art works, "some of which form part of both our artistic heritage and our historical heritage" there will continue to be issues of contention until a clear definition of what visual artworks should be held where.

Examples of Visual Arts Archives

Archives of American Art

Scala Archives

African & Asian Visual Arts Archive

Indonesian Visual Arts Archive (formerly Cemeti Art Foundation)

Akademie der Künste - Visual Arts Archive

Asia Art Archive

Internet Archive's Image Collection

Hong Kong Art Archive (HKAA)

Archiv výtvarného umění - The Fine Art Archive

Rhizome ArtBase

Professional Partners

Artists

Venn diagram of archives, museums, and libraries

Katherine Timms has put forth the idea of a digital integrated access system for museum, archives, and libraries. Timms says that all three fields participate in, “collecting new materials…; organizing and arranging collections (i.e., archival arrangement and description, or cataloguing and classification of books and artifacts); providing access…; and preserving and conserving collections” and are in the same "cultural heritage family." The major barrier being that each profession uses different description paradigms.