BLACK VISUAL ARCHIVES - A CONVERSATION

December 3, 2020

Moderated by Thelma Golden, Director of The Studio Museum in Harlem
Theaster Gates, Rebuild Foundation
Sandra Jackson-Dumont, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art
Franklin Sirmans, Director of the Perez Art Museum, Miami
Deborah Willis, African American photo historian, curator, and photographer

Theaster Gates:
Learning to claim the power of the everyday things.
Looking to everyday blackness to demonstrate the power of the American, the African, and the Black experience in the United States.
Q: What does it mean to be a custodian of culture? A: …Who is going to build the building that will make it possible to receive these things? I am constantly trying to make empty space so that it can be filled with the things of black people. We need to create an environment where we say more and more, “The things of black people are important. The things of your neighborhood are important. The things from your mom’s shop are important.” We need to have spaces dedicated to these things…We need more repositories around the country.
Examples - three record collections: (1) Dr. Wax - hub for black music on the south side of Chicago, (2) Jesse Owens’ Records - became a DJ after being a runner - jazz, bop, and swing - a corpus of Jesse Owens, (3) Marva Jolly Records - potter - shared studios.
Collections require that you have deep encounters. Relationships in which people know you will be a good steward and they can trust you with your things. [deep localism - requiring repositories all over the country]
Q: What is one person who should be interviewed and why? A: Lauren Halsey - how to be directly engaged in a community? [as communities change]
The K. Kofi Moyo Archive (example) - need to keep our elders and the powers of the past in front of us.
cultural producers vs. cultural preservers

Sandra Jackson-Dumont:
The importance of the Studio Museum in Harlem and it’s program, “The Fine Art of Collecting”
Interstitial spaces - the archive providing shape and nuance
Q: What can the institutional world do to be focused on the care of these objects? A: There needs to be space and people who understand and value that material. I think it’s that simple…rethinking of the canon/intersectional approach…these archives are living testimonies that need to be added to and responded to on an ongoing basis.
Q: What is your charge in terms of preservation of archives? A: We rarely have an opportunity to build an archive from the beginning. I think that what is crucial to this moment is to have a plan, for not only archiving, but also thinking of the multiple uses of the archive. Also, accessibility to a large audience through the digital. We need to be organized.
Q: What is one person who should be interviewed and why? A: Linda Goode-Bryant

Franklin Sirmans:
Worked in the registrar’s office in the Studio Museum - the ability to create new narratives from the archives
OrganizIng the exhibition of Noah Purifoy at LACMA - first saw his name in the archive at Studio Museum
Q: Separation of art object from the archive is common practice. Discuss the limit of that line. A: The idea of the discrete objects in space...there is an opportunity to make these objects speak in more potent or large ways. We are facing this with a renewed urgency to speak to wider publics. How do we negotiate the space between the object and the archive? At the Menil, for example, you don’t put a text next to the object - there is something to be said for this - but I believe it’s paramount to ask how to the objects speak and how do we inform that conversation.
Q: How do you think about your own archive and the documents of the artists you work with? A: …Privileging a non-ownership position…can now record interview with artists over zoom…trying to find the balance between the analog and the visual. I was a studio assistant for Ed Clark. The job was to go to his studio and make sense of it.
Q: What is one person who should be interviewed and why? A: Fred Eversley

Deborah Willis:
Benny Andrews (Harlem on My Mind exhibition)
Jean Blackwell Hutson, Ruthann Sewart at the Schomburg Center
James Van Der Zee Photos
Michaux Bookstore
Q: What is to become of artists’ archives in the realm of the digital? A: Example - The Gordon Parks Foundation - he carried the archive with him…
Q: What is one person who should be interviewed and why? A: Cheryl Finley, art historian