The Artist Archives Initiative: The Digital Future of Preserving Artistic Practices Past

On Monday, November 4, join us in welcoming to the Museum Deena Engel, Clinical Professor, Department of Computer Science, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, and Glenn Wharton, Professor, Art History and Conservation of Material Culture Chair, UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Archaeological and Ethnographic Materials. Co-Directors of The Artist Archives Initiative, Engel and Wharton will join us to discuss their development of a new platform to access archival information about contemporary art. This project raises fascinating questions about the nature of art, the archive, and how to preserve the past digitally. The undertaking also exposes the importance of bringing a range of interdisciplinary expertise together to grapple with the challenge—and opportunities—of preserving an artist’s physical and virtual projects in the digital era.

Intriguingly, Engel and Wharton come to this project with different sets of professional expertise. Engel brings to the project her training as a computer scientist. Wharton brings forward his experience as a pioneering time-based media conservator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Both have a long-standing commitment to the preservation and study of digital and material cultures. Their work addresses critical issues: how does one take care of technologically based works of art over the long term when those art works rely upon equipment and software that may rapidly become obsolete? By the same token, how can one take advantage of digital tools to promote new strategies for documenting the work of contemporary artists to enable new connections between seemingly diverse aspects of their practice—such as relationships with friends and colleagues, exhibition histories, correspondence, and publications?

Having first launched the “David Wojnarowicz Knowledge Base” in 2017, the team is now at work on the “Joan Jonas Knowledge Base.” As these titles suggest, these sites represent a point of departure for many paths of inquiry, rather than traditional repositories of artifacts. Each module brings together a sophisticated team of historians and digital experts, including those who are well-established and those who are emerging into the field. The Artist Archives Initiative represents an exciting point of departure for the field itself, as we seek to explore how new digital strategies may create new pathways for understanding the past.

 

Anne Collins Goodyear

Co-Director, Bowdoin College Museum of Art