February 28th, 2011 § § permalink
From Process to Product: Working the Archive is the inaugural series of events hosted by the NYU Workshop in Archival Practice for the Spring 2011 semester. These events are free and open to graduate students, faculty and archival professionals working in the humanities.
Conceived by and for working graduate students and young scholars, the Workshop offers an open forum for graduate students across the humanities to discuss making archival practice, “working the archive,” a part of their scholarly training, teaching philosophy and creative process. We invite established scholars and professional archivists alike to describe their own experiences with archival practice in a more intimate format. Instead of relegating student questions to the Q&A portion of a traditional panel or paper presentation, we encourage graduate students to bring their own work into the conversation with these visiting experts. Our hope is that by engaging closely with experienced scholars and archival professionals, graduate students in the New York area will gain hands-on access both to best practices in archival work and to a larger community of peers. The following question will guide us: as teachers and as scholars, how can we make archives relevant to our own work while increasing possibilities for the public work they should do?
Twitter: NYUArchiveWork
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Our first workshop, THE RADICAL POLITICS OF HIDDEN ARCHIVES, will be held on March 2nd at 6 pm in the Great Room at 19 University Place, led by Steven G. Fullwood, archivist at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and Jillian Cuellar, Processing Archivist for the records of the Communist Party, USA at the Tamiment Library and Wagner Labor Archives. Recent high-profile initiatives attest to a growing interest in identifying and processing “hidden archives.” This workshop takes this interest as a starting point from which to interrogate the category of “hidden” and to debate the practical challenges of working on the margins of accessibility, especially with materials generated by individuals or communities on the political or cultural margins. Mr. Fullwood’s work on the Black Gay and Lesbian Archive and the Hip-Hop Archive, as well as Ms. Cuellar’s work processing the papers of the Communist Party USA, will provide tangible examples of the practical dimensions of archiving radical movements.
February 25th, 2011 § § permalink
Ann Laura Stoler (Anthropology, New School for Social Research)
Reading and discussion of Along the Archival Grain (Princeton University Press, 2010)
Respondent: Robin Wagner-Pacifici (Sociology, New School for Social Research)
March 3, 6-8pm
Room 1106, 6 East 16th Street, New School for Social Research
Recommended reading: Stoler, Ann. Along the Archival Grain Princeton University Press 2010, pp. 17-53 (for a copy please email: NSSRRMemoryConference@gmail.com).
February 22nd, 2011 § § permalink
On March 1 we’re meeting at the Municipal Archives at 4:15. According to the Archives’ website: “The Department of Records and Information Services is located in the Surrogate’s Court Building at 31 Chambers Street in the Civic Center area of lower Manhattan. The building is located on the northwest corner of Centre and Chambers Streets. All visitors to 31 Chambers Street must present a photo ID and pass through security magnetometers.”
via iamos on Flickr: http://bit.ly/hRFNzY
Again, from the Archives’ website: “The Brooklyn Bridge station on the 4, 5, 6, and the J, M, Z subway is one block from 31 Chambers Street. The City Hall Station on the N and R subway, and the Chambers Street Station on the A, C, E, 1, 2, 3 and 9 subway all are within a short distance.”
Our tour begins at 4:30, but please get there early so we have time to go through security.
February 15th, 2011 § § permalink
We are meeting at the Reanimation Library, at 543 Union Street (@ Nevins) in Brooklyn, on Saturday at 2pm. You can take either the F/G train to Carroll Street (from which the library is a three-block walk) or the R to Union Street (from which it’s a two-block walk).
Walk through the gate on Nevins Street, past the left-hand entrance to Cabinet magazine’s event space, and back to the Proteus Gowanus gallery entrance, also on the left. The Reanimation Library is in the back of the gallery.
February 7th, 2011 § § permalink
Alice Attie, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (detail), 2009, Ink on paper
January 26-February 26, 2011
Adam Baumgold Gallery, 60 E 66th Street.
Adam Baumgold Gallery presents the exhibition “Ex Libris” from January 26 through February 26, 2011. The exhibition will focus on art about books and will feature 28 artists: Ed Ruscha, Chris Ware, Maira Kalman, Chip Kidd, Seth, Roz Chast, Robin Tewes, Ruth Marten, Richard Prince, David Hockney, Jean Lowe, Cyrilla Mozenter, Charles Burns, Richard Baker, András Böröcz, Vivienne Koorland, Saul Steinberg, Jennie Ottinger, Nan Swid, Bette Blank, Josephine Halvorson, Molly Springfield, Rebecca Bird, Ryan Brown, Tom Burckhardt, Alice Attie, Renée French and Adam Dant.
Among the works included in the exhibition are Tom Burckhardt’s large “Bookshelf,” 2005 from his exhibition “Full Stop” at the Aldrich Museum – a faux cardboard bookshelf that showcases the artist’s eclectic book collection and simultaneously honors his influences, and Ed Ruscha’s “1984,” 1967 a print whose typography slyly references Orwell’s book with that title. Also featured in the exhibition are many of Ruscha’s early artist’s books and two cover drawings by Chris Ware of his ACME Novelty Library books numbers 16 and 17.
“Ex Libris” also includes Josephine Halvorson’s painting “Many Books,” 2009 that depicts three anonymous stacks of books and Richard Prince’s art book that juxtaposes a drawing of a girl with his drawing interpretation of a ‘DeKooningesque’ woman. Also featured will be a group of Chip Kidd’s actual book covers and book prototypes – master works in graphic design. Jennie Ottinger imparts her unique style in her mini paintings of classic book covers with her own humorous summary of the book’s plotlines within, and Seth’s cardboard sculpture of the fictional “J. Morgan Smith Private Lending Library,” 2009 from his book George Sprott, gently spoofs the seriousness of the institution of the library. Alice Attie contributes dense drawings of text from Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” and Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness.” Nan Swid’s collages from book covers and pages deconstruct the book from utilitarian function to art objects, and Bette Blank’s painting “Ye Olde Book Shoppe,” 2011 depicts a bookshop crammed with colorful books executed with her unique perspective.
Additionally in the exhibition are Richard Baker’s paintings on paper of covers of books such as William Burroughs’ “The Job,” that pays tribute to classic graphic design yet bears the artist’s unmistakable painterly touch, and Charles Burns’ drawing “Love in Vein” from his book “El Borbah” that is an ode to pulp fiction and comics. Maira Kalman’s closed “Proust’s Notebook,” 2010 plays on the viewer’s curiosity about the notebook’s contents. In Robin Tewes’ painting “Her Story: She Reads Like an Open Book,” a female figure is defined by the texts that surround her and Rebecca Bird’s painting “Depository,” 2010 considers books as a receptacle for memory and history.
-from adambaumgoldgallery.com
February 2nd, 2011 § § permalink
I’ve posted our Reading Response schedule here.
I also wanted to encourage some of you to make use of The New School’s own archives, Kellen Archives, in either your Institutional Critique or your final project. Kellen’s archivist, Wendy Scheir, has offered several exciting project proposals:
- You’re welcome to contribute to Kellen’s forthcoming Radical Shifts exhibition (March 23 – April 8), which track’s Parsons’s famous Interior Design program’s reinvention as Environmental Design — a shift that broke “institutional barriers to expand design’s role as an agent of social transformation.”
- Archival collections are traditionally differentiated by creator (as opposed to subject or other categories). Conceive, and defend, re-shufflings of Kellen collections, producing new combinations of materials according to variety of categories.
- Interrogate the “content=content=content” no matter the form, “content-agnostic,” point of view vs. the “archival material as evidence” (its evidential as opposed to informational value); some say archivists fetishize “stuff” and the traditional archives is outmoded – does that hold true for a design archives?
- Consider how various appraisal theories and real-world events/approaches/circumstances affect what is collected, and what ends up in the institutional/historical record?
- Investigate the often-repeated trope of archives as holding “buried treasure.” Is this a useful metaphor? How do institutional history/structure/etc. affect, capitalize upon, inhibit and/or promote archival access?
