Open Access to History: The Brockman Gallery Archive
A history that is lost due to lack of interest, ignorance, negligence, lack of resources, or any other reason can result in major losses to our shared cultural experience. I stepped into the role of archivist for many reasons. First, the ephemera belonging to Brockman Gallery was conveniently housed in two storage areas: my home and a rented storage facility close to my home. Second, when I retired after teaching in the Los Angeles Unified School District for 35 years, I had a tremendous amount of flexible time to avail myself of these materials. Credit must also be given to the numerous graduate students whose research projects brought an early recognition of the need to organize these materials and to make them more easily accessible.
What is missing from this informational equation is the unnerving amount of physical ephemera collected over 20 years of producing announcements, invitations, press releases, slides, photographs, newspaper articles, minutes from meetings, and so on. We have estimated that approximately 98 percent of the physical records of this important history have been saved. These boxes, full file cabinets, slide organizers, art portfolios, and racks of original artworks and posters had been left in a very orderly state but were so numerous that when the uninitiated observer looked inside the storage room it appeared to be an overstuffed locker, filled floor to ceiling and door opening to rear wall!
This history had been locked down for about 25 years in a somewhat ideal situation: it was cool, dark, dry, and secure. When my brother and I decided to close the gallery, we had a series of volunteers and paid assistants to bring some basic order to the records that we had saved over the 20 years that the gallery existed. Items were in many instances categorized by activity or alphabetized by artists’ names, but very little of the material was in chronological order.
In addition to the numerous individual graduate research projects, there were other major projects that motivated us to be more proactive in organizing this archive, including the following publications:
Cece Sims, ed., African American Artists in Los Angeles: A Survey Exhibition (Los Angeles: City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, 2009).
Lyn Kienholz, Elizabeta Betinski, and Corinne Nelson, eds., L.A. Rising: SoCal Artists before 1980 (Los Angeles: California / International Arts Foundation, 2010).
Kellie Jones, Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–1980 (Los Angeles: Hammer Museum; New York: DelMonico Books / Prestel, 2011).
Connie Rogers Tilton and Lindsay Charlwood, L.A. Object and David Hammons Body Prints (New York: Tilton Gallery, 2011).
With each publication the need for more information and more ephemera became ever more important.
August 1, 2014, was my first day as an artist-in-residence at the Art + Practice foundation (A+P). I have been given 14 months to formally archive the Brockman history. This opportunity began with interviews of prospective archivists whose credentials had been screened, but choosing the person who was the right fit was up to me. As part of my due diligence, I spoke with several archival specialists to help me determine the best person for the assignment as well as what kinds of challenges I should expect to encounter. There were conversations about the length of time given to perform this task, where the physical archive might be housed, and how it would be funded. Would the general public have access to these valuable resources, and who would be responsible for their care and maintenance? Planning ahead for the future of this project is just as important as the formal announcement of it presence. Providing virtual access to these records will be a relatively easy task. Questions as to who might house the physical records and the large number of visuals that will accompany them are being discussed and researched. Access to the archive by secondary educational institutions is foremost on my wish list. Having been an art instructor for so many years, I understand the great needs of our youth in a system that has systematically removed the visual arts curriculum from its offerings and requirements.
The archivist Devon Oder is the right fit. She comes to this project with a master’s degree from Art Center College of Design and five years of archival experience. Another benefit is that the very specialized scanning equipment that has been provided by A+P is the same equipment that she mastered at her last assignment. There was no learning curve for her, but it was a beginning experience for me. This process of giving order to the vast number of materials, strategizing how to undertake the effort, and actually performing the tasks of digitizing has been enlightening. Sitting side by side quietly entering the data until questions arise gives an organic quality to the process. We compare, contrast, and cross-reference the materials as they’re being processed. No questions go unanswered as items are given coded letters and numbers with accurate descriptions accompanying all entries. Providing background information daily makes contextualizing easier and is actually a fun experience. This is working from the inside out, as opposed to a historical approach. Certain ephemera prompt stories that guide us in our descriptions of everything banked and add to the highly enriched archival process. This attention to detail will help researchers more thoroughly understand the value of Brockman Gallery and its archive.
