At the heart of the Artists’ Studio Archives program are its graduate student fellows. The grant we received from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) provided funding for up to six graduate student fellows who have been accepted to the dual degree program in Information or Library Science and Art History at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. This is the first time UNC was able to secure funding specifically to support students in this program. Through coursework, internships, and program planning, fellows will be prepared to work within a variety of cultural and visual arts contexts, with an emphasis on collecting and preserving artists’ archives.
In addition to helping design and deliver the two outreach days we have planned, fellows will complete two internships each. One internship will be with a North Carolina artist, working on issues related to the artist’s own personal studio archive; and in a second internship working with artists’ records that have found their way into institutional archives, such as the Smithsonian Archives of American Art and the Mint Museum in Charlotte, N.C. (both of these institutions are partnering with us on the grant).
So, for this first posting, I’m excited to introduce to you our first two fellows in the program, Kim Henze and Colin Post.
Kim Henze, graduate student fellow
Kim Henze hails from Fargo, North Dakota. She attended St. Olaf College in Minnesota for undergraduate degrees in Art History, Ancient Studies, and Environmental Studies. In the many realms of artists’ archives, Kim is most interested in how these archives react to and propagate new understandings of art information literacy in the digital research world– by that, how they open doors for innovative and imaginative approaches to teaching and stimulate engagement with content, creative practices, and art appreciation.
Colin Post, graduate student fellow
Colin Post is originally from Grand Rapids, MI. Before moving to the South, he completed an MFA in Poetry and worked at the Archives & Special Collections at the University of Montana. Colin is especially interested in contemporary digital art and electronic literature and the unique problems these pose for preservation. He believes that archives, both personal and institutional, will play a vital role in ensuring the legacy for these and other ephemeral and marginalized art practices. Colin intends to explore innovative practices for building and sustaining artists’ archives, as well as to develop community partnerships between artists, archives, and other information institutions.
Through internships and coursework, project fellows will be exposed to a range of experiences, including:
- how to handle art-related materials within an archival context (e.g., acquisition, arrangement and description, and preservation)
- ways to collaborate with donors (e.g., artists and their assistants) in the acquisition, processing and description of artists’ archives
- best practices for personal archives and institutional archives work (both digital and analog)
- born-digital and digitization strategies and best practices
- image cataloging procedures and best-practices
- database development
- data curation and preservation
Check back here for regular postings from Kim, Colin, and the rest of our team as the project develops!