Martha Jackson’s Voice: Gender, Oral History, and Art-Historical Evidence

Art historians often go to archives to find those excluded from and forgotten by history. We desire a more inclusive discipline that integrates a wider range of voices than the field’s Eurocentric patriarchal roots typically allow. Oral history serves as a vital tool in that mission by preserving the potency of such voices. Drawing from oral history scholarship, I argue that oral history’s special value lies in its being a narrative, and all that encompasses: lost perspectives, series of remembered truths, and reflections of personal and societal values (in the process of being made personal and social). Through a close reading of the Archives of American Art’s 1969 oral history interview with gallerist Martha Jackson, I grapple with oral history’s complexity in order to better understand gendered experience at midcentury and find Jackson’s voice.