Inside the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art 70th Anniversary Gala

On the occasion of the gala, Observer spoke with the director Anne Helmreich to learn more about the importance of the archives and her vision for its future.

Image of a room during a dinner.
The annual Archives of American Art gala was hosted at The Rainbow Room. Madeleine Thomas/BFA.com

Established in 1954, the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art (the Archives) is the world’s largest resource dedicated to collecting, preserving and making accessible primary sources that tell the story of the history of visual arts in the United States. Each year, the research center hosts a gala to honor those people who exemplify its mission, but Tuesday’s gala at New York’s Rainbow Room was particularly special in that it also celebrated the Archives’ seventieth anniversary.

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Artists Senga Nengudi and Richard Tuttle were awarded the Archives of American Art Medal, while Ann Philbin—recognized for her instrumental role in developing L.A.’s contemporary art scene and soon to retire director of the Hammer Museum—received the Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History. Although Nengundi was unable to attend, Tuttle delivered an inspiring speech, timely ahead of the elections, in which he lauded the Archives as a lens through which to view the United States as truly “united” thanks to the diverse voices shaping its cultural and artistic landscape.

Anne Helmreich, director of the Archives, echoed this sentiment in her speech, which was a powerful reminder of the Archives’ role in stewarding artists’ legacies for future generations and how these legacies are woven into the very fabric of the nation.

Kicking off the evening’s presentation was a moving performance by poet and TED Global Fellow Marc Bamuthi Joseph, whose spoken-word poem “Waves and Bridges” called for an America united as a bridge for racial healing. Over the evening, eight additional honorees whose dedication and contributions have transformed the Archives were recognized, including Alice Walton, Ann Kinney, Barbara G. Fleischman, Frank and Katherine Martucci, the Nina W. Werblow Charitable Trust, the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art and The Henry Luce Foundation.

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Among the night’s notable attendees were Bridget Finn, director of Art Basel Miami Beach; Bridget Moore, owner of DC Moore Gallery; Andrea Rosen, president of The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation and founder of Andrea Rosen Gallery; Marianne Boesky, founder of Marianne Boesky Gallery; collector and journalist Joan Quinn; artist Anthony Akinbola; Salvador Salort-Pons, director, president, and CEO of the Detroit Institute of Arts; and Thomas Lax, curator of media and performance at MoMA.

Observer spoke with Anne Helmreich on the occasion of the gala about the Archives’ significance, its ongoing efforts in preservation and promotion and her vision for advancing resource accessibility in the years to come by leveraging new technology to reach wider audiences.

Image oif three people two young woman and a guy and a older woman on the stage.
Anne Helmreich with Amanda Quinn Olivar and George Merck, trustees and gala co-chair. Rupert Ramsay/BFA.com

What’s the history of the Archives? Can you give us a quick overview of how it started and developed over its 70 years?

The Archives of American Art began in 1954the inspiration of Edgar P. Richardson, then Director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Lawrence A. Fleischman, a Detroit executive and art collector. Both were keenly interested in American art; Richardson had been asked to write a history of American painting. Fleischman was avidly collecting American art, and through these endeavors, it became clear that source materials on American art were hard to find and potentially in danger of disappearing. Recognizing this need, they founded an organization that would bring together materials about art relating to the entirety of the United States, in all its vastness and diversity, in one place that was easily accessible to all.

Their original conception was to photograph original documents and store and share the copies via microfilm. They began with a trial project in Philadelphia and, with that success, carried on from city to city and region to region. To this day, the Archives still have those original microfilms (over 8,500). In 1970, the Archives joined the Smithsonian Institution, moving from its former home at the Detroit Institute of Arts to create a national collection and serve audiences nationwide and even worldwide.

Today, the collections have grown to over twenty million letters, diaries, sketches and preparatory works, scrapbooks, manuscripts, financial records, photographs, films, and audiovisual recordings of artists, dealers, collectors, critics, scholars, museums, galleries, associations and other art-world individuals and institutions.

We continue to collect nationwide; for example, we have a staff member dedicated to collecting in the New York region (Jacob Proctor, Gilbert and Ann Kinney New York Collector) and another dedicated to collecting on the West Coast (Matthew Simms, Gerald Bente Buck West Coast Collector).

We also collect via special initiatives, such as collecting materials related to Latino art led by Josh T Franco, who is now our Head of Collecting. We have also had special initiatives to collect materials relating to craft, feminist art, and African American art, as well as an oral history project supported by the Keith Haring Foundation to produce a series of in-depth oral history interviews with key witnesses to the AIDS epidemic and its impact on the visual arts community. We currently have a staff member, Christina Ayson-Plank, who is leading our efforts to collect Asian Pacific American materials.

Image of a man with long hair and blue suit with a asian human.
Richard Tuttle and Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. Rupert Ramsay/BFA.com

Can you share some highlights from the Archives?

Our collections are particularly strong in the lives of artists. We have countless letters, diaries, sketchbooks, preparatory materials and other ephemera related to artists’ lives and their careers, from the diaries of Rubens Peale, an early American painter, and the letters of Gilded Age painter John Singer Sargent to the correspondence of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. We also have over 2,600 oral histories with artists, including voices from our own times, such as Lita Albuquerque, Mark Bradford, Fred Eversley, Sheila Hicks, Rúben Ortiz-Torres and Wendy Red Star. Other major themes are art instruction, research and writing about art, collecting and patronage and the art market. We hold the papers, for example, of dealers Leo Castelli and Betty Parsons, who changed the course of 20th-century art. Our website contains more information about our collections and their contents.

To what extent are these archives vital resources for those interested in American culture and art? How can people access them?

The Archives hold countless stories illuminating American art and culture’s complex, ever-changing nature—stories of creativity, personal struggle and identity, community, changing art forms, collections formed, museums established, relationships, travel, crossing borders and exchanging ideas. Let me give you an example: If you were curious about street art and graffiti in the U.S., especially on the West Coast, I would suggest you look at our papers on the Chicano painter and commercial artist Charles “Chaz” Bojórquez.

People can access our materials in different ways. If you want something on microfilm, you can visit our D.C. reading room or one of our four affiliated Research Centers (Boston Public Library, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, De Young Museum and the Huntington Library). If you are interested in original materials not found on microfilm, you can make an appointment to see them in the D.C. reading room. We have digitized nearly four million records, which you can access via our website. All for free.

Throughout history, archives have sometimes presented a limited perspective, influenced by the type of documents collected and who has access to them. How do the Archives of American Art maintain neutrality in this regard?

We collect widely. We try to ensure any particular topic can be understood through various voices and sources. So, if you are interested in Pop Art, you can learn about it from the perspective of the artists who were part of the movement, their dealers, their collectors and their critics. We take an inclusive approach to collecting. We aim to represent a broad chronological and geographic scope and actively seek the papers of BIPOC, LGBTQ+, persons with disabilities, women and other historically underrepresented groups significant to the history of art in the U.S. Our special initiatives also come into play here, as they help to strengthen different areas in the archives. Anyone can make an appointment to consult materials in our reading room. Our website gives anyone with an internet connection access to our digitized materials and descriptions of our collections.

We are fortunate to have received funding from the Terra Foundation for American Art to create the Terra Foundation Center for Digital Collections, a virtual repository for the study of the visual arts of the United States. With this funding and that from other foundations and major donors, we digitize substantial portions of our most significant collections. In addition, a recent gift from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation (2018) enables the Archives to digitize material from historically underrepresented artists in its collections.

Image of two woman in a dinner with one showing an award.
Anne Helmreich with Annie Philbin. Rupert Ramsay/BFA.com

Another significant challenge is, no doubt, preservation. What measures are used to address this issue?

Being part of the Smithsonian Institution means we follow all the state-of-the-field standards for collections care, including climate control and other measures. We also approach digitization as a form of preservation. If we can digitize a 16mm film for the public, we can better preserve that original film stock.

Another challenge is enhancing access through new technologies. This begins with digitization and now extends to finding innovative ways to make information and content more engaging and accessible for diverse audiences. How has your approach evolved and improved in this area over the years?

The Archives has always been interested in how we can leverage new technologies to enhance access. When we began, access was through microfilms. Today, our materials are made available as data files through digitization. One of our most recent programs to make our content more engaging and accessible is our podcast, Articulated: Dispatches from the Archives of American Art, which the Alice L. Walton Foundation supported. The podcast draws on our oral history interviews, connecting past to present in dialogue with today’s thought leaders. For example, Season 3, episode 10, “Eternal Futures of Native American Art,” weaves together oral histories with Joe Feddersen, G. Peter Jemison and Preston Singletary.

As the Archives celebrates its anniversary, what is your vision for its future and what specific goals do you have related to preserving, building and sharing the history of American art? 

We are tremendously excited for the next seventy years and beyond! Our vision is to continue illuminating how archives are vital, dynamic and critical to understanding art as essential to the human experience. As we look to the future, our goals are to continue to build and care for a national collection that represents the breadth and depth of the United States; to increase access to our collections and content by improving user experience and leveraging digital technologies and innovative approaches; to expand public engagement by activating our collections, connecting audiences to our content and inviting creative uses; and preparing our organization to meet the needs of the future, such as collecting born-digital content.

image of a room full of people sitting having dinner.
On the occasion of the gala, Observer spoke with director Anne Helmreich to learn more about the importance of the archives. Rupert Ramsay/BFA.com

Inside the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art 70th Anniversary Gala