Digital Embodiments of Artists’ Archives

This article is an inquiry into the presentation and organization of digitized materials and analogous records from artists’ archives on the web. Traditionally, artists’ archives have been described hierarchically with finding aids—text-based documents detailing contents of collections, boxes, and analog folders. The ubiquity of the web and prevalence of digitization has disrupted hierarchical arrangement associated with archival description and shifted researchers’ expectations of access to records. This shift has affected modes of presentation and dissemination of such information resources. The author examines timely examples of digitized artists’ archives and similar resources, including the Asia Art Archive, the Russian Art Archive Network, the Artist Archives Initiative, and the Archives of American Art. [This article is a revision of the paper that won the 2020 Gerd Muehsam Award. The award recognizes excellence in a paper written by a graduate student on a topic relevant to art librarianship or visual resources curatorship.]