Course talk:ARST573/Archives - Fine Arts

Hi Jason,

This is a truly well done wiki page. I only notice one minor awkward sentence in your introductory paragraph. The first sentence may be better phrased if you take out "works of".

Thank you for the generous compliment! I have removed the two words, per your suggestion.

Hi Jason, Great wiki - so thorough and well thought out. Following up on Victor's comment below re using too many references to scholars ( and because I can't find any other points of critique) maybe you could insert a brief introductory sentence when a scholar is being referenced stating their field. For example, Brian S Osborne is/was a professor of historical geography at Queens, I believe? This way a general audience will have a better point of reference. You probably aren't at this stage yet (I noticed you did it in your overview) but I would add in more hyperlinks to other pages as well as a few more images since your wiki is necessarily a bit text heavy. Great job!

Kaitlin,

Thanks for the comments/suggestions. I have now added introductory phrases to all (I hope!) of the people I make direct reference to on my page. As for pictures, I looked but was unable to find any images of actual visual arts archives.

- Jason

Hey Jason !

your page looks great and was a really interesting read! I would suggest however when introducing someone such as Meryl C Crayton - maybe say something right off the bat about who they are.. I was left wondering why they had authority to comment.. and this could easily be fixed by saying something like Archivist Meryl C Crayton. I only noticed this once i was in further sections and I was wondering who this person was. so not a real problem just something i noticed! Your page looks great!

Morgan,

Thanks for the comments/compliments. I have now added introductory phrases to all (I hope!) of the people I make direct reference to on my page.

- Jason

Hey, Jason!

Just finished looking over your page, and I really like it!

I hate to do this so late, but I think you may need to expand the "mixed intentions" section. I don't think you need much, but it may work to your advantage to give an example of what you mean.

Good luck!

Again, awesome page. Hard to find constructive feedback so I only have small suggestions today :) -move your citation 6 (Furness) to the following sentence, the one beginning with 'Amy Furness suggests.' I reached the end of it and expected a citation which was actually in the previous sentence -giving an example of Mixed Intentions might be useful as I'm not quite sure what you mean in that section -The Mark A. Landis story is cool! -I suggest providing a bit more context/discussion in your section on professional partners. What sort of responsibilities/benefits do these partnerships have? How do they differ between institutions? etc.

Thanks for the compliments. I am equally impressed with your page.

Good catch on the #6 citation. I will definitely move that to the next sentence.

As for professional partners, a lot could be said in that section. Perhaps even a ARST wiki topic itself. If I have any time I will try to add a brief paragraph or so about them. However, honestly, I don't exactly think the chances of me having "free time" to do that is likely to happen. Of course, I acknowledge that you are right, but when two big projects are due at the same date, as I am sure you know yourself, unfortunately some things have to be lost in the shuffle.

Jason—this is so thorough! I like the way you're organized your page, I feel like you can jump in and out of the sections and they stand independently as well as flow together as a whole.

One suggestion: what are your thoughts on adding artists to your list of professional partners? I think they could be considered as playing a weighty role in that network of relationships between institutions/curators/archivists. Especially when it comes to donations. Sometimes an artist may have a professional connection to a gallery or museum that guides their decision to donate their records to a particular archive. Also, since an artists' records and the output of their art practice may not be easy to actually separate, I think artists' can have an unconventional continuing relationship with their records even after they (the records) have been institutionalized.

Amy,

Thanks for the kind comments. That is a great suggestion! I will definitely add artists to the professional partners section.

- Jason

Hi Jason,

Great wiki so far! I really enjoyed reading it and think you have good coverage of the topic. I agree with what Victor and Kaitlin have pointed out about the references and needing to explain things further/be more general. I know its something a lot of us, myself included, have been struggling with. One example is in your "Introduction to Visual Arts and Artist's Archives" section (also should that be Artists', instead of Artist's? Not sure how you're interpreting the possession here) where you write, "Traditional archivists take the view that visual arts or artist's archives..." Could you explain further what a "traditional archivist" is for those readers who don't understand this?

Also, in your "Mixed Intentions" section, could you elaborate on this a bit further? What exactly are these differing intentions? Maybe just provide some examples.

Hi Mr. Martin,

I expect nothing less than the best from you and this wiki is definitely up to your usual high-quality standards. As a fan of the fine/visual arts, I'm happy that you chose to cover this topic, as I think you will do a great job with it. The following comments are just my own thoughts and preferences, hence, take it with a pinch of salt.

I like that you explain and clarify what "fine arts" encompasses, but I feel that it would be more useful to connect the reader with the archival aspect first and then go into the explanation (but this is just a personal preference). Given this, kind of curious why you didn't go with "Visual Arts" as your title, instead of "Fine Arts"? Not a big deal though.

Your "Issues" section is great and I like how extensive it is. I find challenges and issues are always hard to talk about, but always the most interesting read. Like what you've done here.

Are you planning on looking at archives outside of North America?

Only because someone pointed this out on my wiki, and I see a little bit of it on yours, do you think you/we are using too many quotes and references to scholars that may not mean much to others? People have been telling me to write with a more general tone, as opposed to an academic-essay style.

Keep promoting the fine arts my friend, great job.

Take care,

V

Hi Jason, Are the three links at the bottom of your wiki article going to be separate sections or are they just links? If they are just links, I think they should be smaller otherwise it looks unfinished. Other than that it looks good! -Sarah

Sarah,

Good point. I have changed them to smaller headings now.

- Jason

Hey Jason,

Thank you for uploading one of your own pictures from Rome of the Tabularium with the temple of Saturn in front of it. I had trouble finding a photo in the creative commons that had exactly what I wanted.

Thanks, Sarah

Sarah,

You're welcome for the image. Glad it worked for what you needed.

Thank you for your help with the Wikipedia code for resizing and embedding images. It was really helpful for making my page layout look more professional.

- Jason

I found this resource really helpful, if a little hard to understand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Extended_image_syntax I hope this helps if you choose to embed more images.

-Sarah

hi pod-member,

I was interested to see where you would take this fine arts entry; the archive/gallery distinction is one I hadn't really considered and was interested to read more about. You may want to focus more on traditional visual art like painting and sculpture rather than other forms like media art or digital or web art, but those provide some exciting challenges to art archive and digital preservation endeavors. Have you seen Rhizome's Art Base? It's an interesting archive of media art made from a variety technologies and formats; they do a lot of research in how to digitally preserve media art. http://rhizome.org/artbase/?ref=header Because I wasn't sure what type of fine or visual art you were focusing on, I looked up the terms to see the difference: fine arts contains painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry (according to Wikipedia), and visual arts include ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, photography, video, filmmaking and architecture (also Wikipedia). It might be helpful to the reader to state what art archives traditionally consist of in the context of your page.

In the American and Canadian sections I would have loved to read about some examples of artists and works in various archives, so the reader gets an idea of what is being held by institutions in those countries. Might be an opportunity to bring some visuals in as well.

Hi Shyla,

Thanks for the comment. I had not heard of Rhizome's Art Base before. I will definitely check that out. I used your suggestion of explaining what the term "fine arts" and "visual arts" is usually used to represent, as well as provide a reasoning on why I have chosen to use "visual arts" more consistently throughout the page. In some ways, it seems similar to the whole argument between what constitutes "high art" and "low art." Personally, I think it is an arbitrary distinction, based on what one person or a group of people determine to be "good," but, of course, this is always subjective. Anyway, thanks for the suggestion.

Thanks again for your suggestions and comments

hi, it does seem to provide a bit of useful context at the beginning, I like the introduction. The other thing I would suggest is to remove the colons (:) after the headers. I don't think they are necessary on top of the formatting that already distinguishes them, and end up being a bit distracting for the reader. At least for me, anyways. Good luck with the final week of work...

This looks like it's going to be a really great page! You've done a good job going into to all the practical/ theoretical issues around fine arts archives. I also really liked the bit that touched on the differences/ similarities between museums and archives. Just a few suggestions:

• I'm not sure if you were planning to do this since you have sections on Canadian and American fine arts archives, but I think some links to some current fine arts archives could be useful at a basic level just to show what an example of a fine arts archives, but also for interested readers to get a sense of what's out there currently
• I agree with Adena that an overview section before the table of contents would help tie everything together

Christie,

Thanks for the comments. I definitely want to link and provide as examples some current/modern art-based archives on my page. I just haven't figured out which ones to include, as well as how to work out the information just yet. But I definitely agree it would be a helpful inclusion. Glad to know I am not the only one thinking in this direction.

I was just reading over your page again, and I thought I'd say that you've done a great job collecting links to a really diverse set of fine arts archives (both geographically and by the types of art they pertain to) - they're all so interesting! And the intro you've added really helps to set up the page.

Thanks, Christie! I appreciate you looking at my updates and providing feedback on them.

Just noting down my impressions as I read through it. Suggestions:

• include short introductory statement before table of contents
• this is sheer pedantry on my part but stylistically I prefer 15 years over "decade-and-a-half"
• personal archives have also been neglected because Jenkinson and Schellenberg dismissed them
• I like the section on Yeo and Taylor
• stating the obvious but your Issues section needs to be fleshed out
• Authenticity: I don't know if you're planning to talk about this but I would think that a discussion of provenance might be fitting as that is an integral concept in the art world too but with slightly different connotations (as far as I know)
• really like the discussion of impermanence

Hi Adena,

Thanks for your comments.

I like the idea of adding a quick overview/introductory paragraph before the table of contents. I will have to give some thought as to what to include in this section, but thank you for the suggestion.

I agree, 15 years sounds better.

Good point. Any idea of what to use as a source to explain that both Jenkinson and Schellenberg dismissed personal archives? I wondered if in your own research you might have come across a relevant source.

Thanks.

Yeah, the "Issues" section definitely still needs some major work.

Thanks for the reminder about providing at least a small discussion pertaining to provenance too! Based on your comment, I remembered reading Laura Millar's "Death of the Fonds" article which discusses provenance at length, including how it is used in museum studies and archaeology. I plan to incorporate some of her points on the topic when I get a chance.

Thanks again for the helpful comments and suggestions.

For the Jenkinson/Schellenberg element, I'd suggest skimming Fisher, Rob, “In Search of a Theory of Private Archives: The Foundational Writings of Jenkinson and Schellenberg Revisited,” Archivaria(67) (Spring 2009) or Pollard, Riva A., “The Appraisal of Personal Papers: A Critical Literature Review,” Archivaria(52) (Fall 2001)

Fisher tries to make it work which personally I don't agree with but he does deal very specifically with J and Sch's writings. Pollard focuses on appraisal but her literature review section is excellent.

I hope that helps!

That is very helpful. Thanks!

Hi Jason,

Just thought I would suggest a few articles relevant to this topic. You might have already come across them. They are just some I have found helpful when writing on art archives in the past.

Blinkhorn, Victoria Louise. “The Records of Visual Artists: Appraising for Acquisition and Selection.” M.A. diss., University of British Columbia, 1988.

Burant, Jim. “Visual Archives and the Writing of Canadian History: A Personal Review.” Archivaria 54 (2002): 92-117.

Carter, Rodney G.S. “Tainted Archives: Art, Archives, and Authenticity.” Archivaria 63 (2007): 75-86.

Hannah

Hannah,

Thanks for the recommended articles! I have read, and plan to use, "Tainted Archives," but I had not found the other two sources. Thanks again!

Hi Jason This is a really well-written page so far, and I think you've identified some good sections for art archives. Something I would be interested to see in it though is some discussion of preservation issues that are specific to art archives (ie., due to the different mediums, size/space concerns for artwork, as opposed to traditional archives). Preservation of artworks is not always addressed in archival discussion as much as it is for museum studies, and I think this is a good place to consider those things.

Hey Kelsey,

Thanks for your suggestion. I really like the idea of bringing in a discussion on preservation issues specific to visual arts archives. I will definitely try to give the issue, though it is a quite large one, at least some discussion in my wiki page. Thanks!