Archives 101: Finding Aids are the Windows into a Collection

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In this series, Phillips Manager, Archives and Library Resources Juli Folk and Digital Assets Librarian Rachel Jacobson explain the ins and outs of how archives work.

Welcome to another installment of Archives 101. So far, we have reviewed what an archival collection is and critical steps in archival processing. Now, let’s focus on describing archival material so that you, the researcher, might decide whether or not to seek further access to an archival collection.

The primary tool to figuring out whether or not an archival collection may be of use to you is the Finding Aid. A finding aid, according to the Society of American Archivists, is a description that typically consists of contextual and structural information about an archival resource. A finding aid should place the archival resources within context that allows a user to decide if they want to explore a collection more thoroughly. The contextual information generally included in a finding aid is:

  • • Title for the collection
  • • Dates, including bulk dates which indicate the period that most of the material is from
  • • Note about what can be found within the collection, usually called a scope and content note
  • • Provenance information
  • • Note about how the material has been arranged, usually called an arrangement note
  • • Description of the formats within a collection and storage information

As was the case with accessioning and arrangement, there is some wiggle room around how finding aids are written. However, this should not indicate that there aren’t documented standards and procedures for an archivist to follow.

The Phillips Collection archival repository is embarking on a new era with the implementation of the archival information management system ArchivesSpace. One of the many helpful things about the management system is that it helps create consistency across finding aids due to format and required fields. It also is the first time our archival material will be in one centralized and searchable database. We’re making progress; getting all our archival holdings into the system is a lofty goal and will take time!

However, the system will make searching through finding aids much easier. Below is a screenshot of some of the archival finding aids in our instance of ArchivesSpace thus far. ArchivesSpace refers to finding aids as collections, which are what the finding aid guides you through.

Peek into our instance of the archival information management system, ArchivesSpace.

After reading the notes and other information that gives you insight into generally what exists within a collection you can take a closer look at the contents.

Take a closer look into the finding aid. Scope and contents notes, dates, and other information give you insight into what you can broadly expect to find from a given archival collection.

By clicking on the “Collection Organization” tab you can see more specifically what the contents of a given collection are. For example, you will find titles of folders and the dates for which the material was created.

If everything still seems relevant to your research inquiry it may be time to request access to a specific folder, set of folders, or archival box.

A look inside one of the folders from the papers of C. Law Watkins (associate director of the gallery and director of the art school). Some of our folders will be accessible remotely, but for most of the material, researchers will still need to look at them in person.

Due to the arduous nature of getting to the point where an archivist is ready to create a finding aid, The Phillips Collection Library and Archives does not yet have nearly all our archival collections described. We are working to catch up with our material. The more we have available to users, the more likely we are to find those diamonds in the rough. Stay tuned for more information about the launch of our ArchivesSpace repository this summer!

Exploring a History of LGBTQ Identity through Art History

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🏳️‍🌈#HappyPride! The Phillips Collection is proud to partner with @samesexinthecity to celebrate, honor, and examine Queer art during #Pride and beyond. Explore a history of LGBTQ identity through art history by pairing artists with this facet of their identity.

What is queer art history? There is no particular style, type, medium, or even definition. Instead, we use it to explore art that speaks to the depths of queer life and experience, culture, and norms. The gift of queerness to art is its refusal to be defined. This resistance to dominant culture, and the way that the codes and cultures of queerness provide creative language and resources for artists, is why queer art is so important for art history and museum collections today. To search for queer art and artists in art history means that we question the divide between “high” and “low” art, between truth and gossip, and between public faces and private lives. In doing this, we are expanding the stories that are housed in our museums and shared with the public. 

The Phillips is an institution that has celebrated its untraditional collecting strategies and relationships with artists. Like many other museums in the United States, our permanent collection today features a variety of artists who both identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or queer; we also feature artists who thought of their identities in different and complex ways. We have artworks that seem to draw upon queer desire, such as Minor White’s Nude Foot from 1947. Charles DeMuth is known just as much for his still lives and nature scenes (as represented in our collection) as he is for his works depicting sailors or homoerotic settings. There are artists such as Joan Snyder, who expressed her desire not to be defined just as a lesbian or lesbian artist alone, yet who has spoken very clearly about the importance of same-sex desire in her life and artwork. Some contemporary artists such as John Edmonds hope to use their artworks as an “archive and excavation of queer black  history.” The Phillips is just at the beginning of its journey to piece together the possible hidden histories of our collection, and we are excited to see what queer history and artists can be excavated!

Left to right: Minor White, Nude Foot, 1947, Gelatin silver print, 10 1/2 x 13 3/4 in., The Phillips Collection, The Dreier Fund for Acquisitions, 2006; Joan Snyder, Savage Dreams, between 1981 and 1982, Oil, acrylic, and fabric on canvas, 66 x 180 in., The Phillips Collection, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gifford Phillips in honor of Laughlin Phillips, 1992

Welcome to NatureISpiritIArt

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Museum Educator Carla Freyvogel shares her experience at the first session of the NatureISpiritIArt workshop on art and climate change.

At the end of the day, it is all about relationships. Relationships to each other, relationships to our own best and worst selves, relationships to art . . . and relationships to nature.

We began the first session of NatureISpiritIArt by establishing our relationships to each other. Using the “Art Card Game” produced by The Phillip Collection as a starting point for conversation, we exchanged ideas, connecting images of artworks to our personal stories. There were landscapes that reminded us of home in California, abstracted images that evoked moods, and colors that stimulated memories.

Aparna Sadananda then led a meditation in front of Self Portrait as a Tree, 2000, by Sam Taylor-Johnson, bringing us in and out of our visual relationship with the photograph on one hand and the inner workings of our minds on the other.

Aparna Sadananda leads a meditation in the galleries

With Joshua Shannon and Robert Hardies, facilitators of the five-week course, we pondered the degree to which we could see the human hand at work in Self Portrait as Tree. We identified the man-made, geometric structure of the shed, the rough-hewn rails of the fencing, the cultivated field juxtaposed with a cluster of wild grasses, and the two-track of dirt, the result of repeated visits by a pickup truck. What really is the relationship of humans to the natural world? If we begin to examine art through an “eco-critical lens,” we focus in on the underlying messages about how humans relate to the natural world.

In a post-meditative calm, we roamed the gallery, looking beyond Self Portrait with Tree to the other landscapes on the wall. Practicing our “eco-critical lens” we see these in a new light. Might we be in a soft, accommodating space with nature, coexisting as in George Inness’s Moonlight, Tarpon Springs? Are we exploitative, as we parade down the ramp of a bridge meant for show, as in Julian Alden Weir’s The Fishing Party? Or do we treat nature as “other” as Augustus Vincent Tack’s Winter Landscape suggests—just a pretty picture of a vista that has nothing really to do with us?

Left to right: George Inness, Moonlight, Tarpon Springs, 1892; Julian Alden Weir, The Fishing Party, c. 1915; Augustus Vincent Tack, Winter Landscape, c. 1898-c. 1902

In his 1995 essay The Trouble with Wilderness, William Cronon suggests that “wilderness embodies a dualistic vision in which the human is entirely outside the natural. If we allow ourselves to believe that nature, to be true, must also be wild, then our very presence represents its fall …To the extent that we celebrate wilderness as the measure with which we judge civilization, we reproduce the dualism that sets humanity and nature at opposite poles.” In other words, no relationship.

But if we look back to Self Portrait with Tree, and think eco-critically, we can see that Sam Taylor-Johnson has shown us a tree leaning with the wind and the slope of the land, yet still reaching for the sky, saying, “Yes, some limbs might be broken, but the sunlight of this sky, the rain storm that may come, will nurture me as a person and me . . . as a tree.” A symbiotic and beautiful relationship.

I have a hint now of what is in store for us in this program. Our time together, with the goal of cultivating personal resilience in the face of climate change, will provide me another way to appreciate and find relevance in our collection.