More Than Words
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Words can speak volumes, but, as every letter writer knows, there are times when they simply won't do. And when the author happens to be a visual artist, the results can be both intimate and transcendent. This book is a testament to those occasions, a compilation of personal letters by some of America's most revered artists, each one adorned with an illustration. Writing to wives, lovers, friends, patrons, clients, and confidants are such revered artists as Frederick Edwin Church, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Andrew Wyeth, Rockwell Kent, Lyonel Feininger, John Sloan, Alfred Frueh, Man Ray, Eero Saarinen, Alexander Calder, Gio Ponti, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein. Sometimes humorous, sometimes extravagant, but always revealing and intimate, they picture the world around them in charming vignettes, landscapes, portraits, and caricatures. Together with their words, these autobiographical works of art created for private consumption reveal the joys and successes, loves and longings, disappointments and frustrations of their authors' lives. These riveting artifacts are drawn from the collection of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, one of the largest repositories of artists' papers in the nation, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2005.
Introduction to Archives
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(Concise little guide for record office users.)
The Oxford Handbook of Public Heritage Theory and Practice
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The field of cultural heritage is no longer solely dependent on the expertise of art and architectural historians, archaeologists, conservators, curators, and site and museum administrators. It has dramatically expanded across disciplinary boundaries and social contexts, with even the basic the definition of what constitutes cultural heritage being widened far beyond the traditional categories of architecture, artifacts, archives, and art. Heritage now includes vernacular architecture, intangible cultural practices, knowledge, and language, performances and rituals, as well as cultural landscapes. Heritage has also become increasingly entangled with the broader social, political, and economic contexts in which heritage is created, managed, transmitted, protected, or even destroyed. Heritage protection now encompasses a growing set of methodological approaches whose objectives are not necessarily focused upon the maintenance of material fabric, which has traditionally been cultural heritage's primary concern. The Oxford Handbook of Public Heritage Theory and Practice charts some of the major sites of convergence between the humanities and the social sciences, where new disciplinary perspectives are being brought to bear on heritage. These convergences have the potential to provide the interdisciplinary expertise needed not only to critique but also to achieve the intertwined intellectual, political, and socioeconomic goals of cultural heritage in the twenty-first century. This volume highlights the potential contributions of development studies, political science, anthropology, management studies, human geography, ecology, psychology, sociology, cognitive studies, and education to heritage studies.
"An organized brown wooden drawers" by cottonbro studio is licensed under CC0 / Cropped from original
Archives (both digital and physical) are a way to preserve information. An archive is, simply, an ‘accumulation of records’ and there are over 2500 of these repositories across the UK, and many hundreds of thousands more globally (Collis, n.d). The National Archives in London, for example, hold records relating to everything from medieval history to the operations of the Home Office. Archives serve as repositories of knowledge, and as the UNESCO Director General, Audrey Azoulay, puts it, ‘Archives are essential for the collective memory of humanity and preparing for the future.’ (Azoulay, 2023)
A records office is a place where official government records are stored – these repositories may also contain other archival collections which are not official government records.
