Off the wall and into a drawer: Managing a research collection of political posters

American Archivist

Volumn 66, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 303-324

  Tschabrun, Susan ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 70349899605     PISSN: 03609081     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.17723/aarc.66.2.x482536031441177     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. David Kunzle, Che Guevara: Icon, Myth, and Message (Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1997).
2. For an interesting comparison of U.S. and Italian election posters, see Howard Anthony Risatti, "The Contemporary Political Poster in Italy," Art Journal 44 (Spring 1984): 11-15.
3. James Burant, "Ephemera, Archives, and Another View of History," Archivaria 40 (Fall 1995): 193.
4. "Posters have been exhibited and published occasionally by the National Museum of American Art but not previously collected at the Museum as an essential chapter in the story of our nation's visual culture. This book and show, and the fledgling collection now begun, signal the Museum's new awareness of the vital role played by these high-keyed and exciting images." Therese Than Heyman, Posters American Style (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1998), 6.
5. William H. Helfand, "The Search for Ephemera Images," Visual Resources 11 (1995): 104. Helfand's estimate of ephemera in general probably holds true for posters as well, namely that 80 to 90 percent of cataloged collections are in private hands.
6. Maurice Rickards, The Encyclopedia of Ephemera: A Guide to the Fragmentary Documents of Everyday Life for the Collector, Curator, and Historian (New York: Routledge, 2001), v.
7. Miriam R. Levin, "Democratic Vistas-Democratic Media: Defining a Role for Printed Images in Industrializing France," French Historical Studies 18 (Spring 1993): 82-108.
8. Examples of recent publications include James Aulich and Marta Sylvestrová, Political Posters in Central and Eastern Europe 1945-95 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999);
9. Victoria E. Bonnell, Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters Under Lenin and Stalin (Berkeley: University of California Press,1997);
10. Leah Dickerman, Building the Collective: Soviet Graphic Design 1917-1937 (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996);
11. John D. H. Downing, Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2001);
12. Harriet Evans and Stephanie Donald, Picturing Power in the People's Republic of China: Posters of the Cultural Revolution (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999);
13. Yvonne Murphy, et al., eds., Troubled Images: Posters and Images of the Northern Ireland Conflict from the Linen Hall Library, Belfast (Belfast: Linen Hall Library, 2001);
14. Cary Nelson, Shouts from the Wall: Posters and Photographs Brought Home from the Spanish Civil War by American Volunteers (Waltham, Mass.: Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, 1996);
15. Chon A. Noriega, ¿Just Another Poster? Chicano Graphic Arts in California (Santa Barbara, Calif.: University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2001);
16. Dominic Wring, Framing Politics: 20th Century British Political Posters (London: Politicos, 2002).
17. Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials (London: Sage Publications, 2001).
18. David D. Perlmutter, "Visual Historical Methods: Problems, Prospects, Applications," Historical Methods 27, no. 4 (Fall 1994): 167.
19. In the United States, many libraries have received government materials through a library depository program, which has included at various times a greater or lesser percentage of the Government Printing Office's poster output. Diana Gonzalez Kirby, "Managing Government-Sponsored Posters in the Academic Library," Government Information Quarterly 6, no. 3 (1989): 283.
20. DeNoon estimates that only 2,000 examples of roughly 35,000 total WPA poster designs have been preserved, even though two million copies were printed. Christopher DeNoon, Posters of the WPA (Los Angeles: Wheatley Press, 1987): 7.
21. Lincoln Cushing, ¡Revolucion! Cuban Poster Art, available at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/ %7Elcushing/CubaGen.html (accessed 11 November 2003).
22. Florence M. Jumonville, "Printed Ephemera-The Raw Materials of History," LLA Bulletin 53 (Fall 1990): 55.
23. Marcy Flynn and Helena Zinkham, "The MARC Format and Electronic Reference Images: Experiences from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division," Visual Resources 11 (1995): 48.
24. Hadley's description of different methods of organizing visual ephemera-provenance-based, artificially created, and within larger collections-does a good job of presenting the advantages and drawbacks of each option. Mary Hadley, "Access and Description of Visual Ephemera," Collection Management 25 (2001): 44-48.
25. An example of a short-lived graphics collective is Group Graphics, a Los Angeles group of about twelve artists who came together for three months in 1970 around opposition to the Vietnam War and support of the Soledad Brothers. A few examples of long-lived collectives include Chicago Women's Graphics Collective (Chicago 1970-1983), Black Cat (New York, 1978-1995)
26. Royal Chicano Air Force (Sacramento, Calif. 1969-1994)
27. and the Guerrilla Girls (New York, 1985-present).
28. Examples of such print shops include Inkworks Press in Berkeley, California, and Self-Help Graphics & Art, Inc. in Los Angeles, California.
29. The Hoover Institution clearly gives prominence to the issuing agency, but the Library of Congress Prints and Photograph Division seems equally likely to assign the poster designer or sponsor to the MARC fields mapped to "Creator" or "Related Names." Compare, for instance, Library of Congress posters, POS 6 - U.S., no. 423 (C size) and POS 6 - U.S., no. 367 (C size). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, "P&P Online Catalog," http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/pphome.html (accessed 11 November 2003).
30. J. Paul Getty Trust, "Union List of Artist Names Browser," 2000, http://www.getty.edu/research/ tools/vocabulary/ulan/ (accessed 11 November 2003). Barbara Kruger (b. 1945) and Rupert Garcia (b. 1941) are two political poster artists who have gained enough recognition in the art world to be included in ULAN.
31. The Library of Congress Name Authority file is available through OCLC or RLIN. A publicly accessible interface is available through the Public Academic Library Network of Indiana at http://www.palni.edu/Z3950/LC-Names.html (accessed 11 November 2003).
32. Catalogers looking for a source of rules for cataloging graphic materials may consult Graphic Materials: Rules for Describing Original Items and Historical Collections, which is based on the work of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. U.S. Library of Congress, "Graphic Materials - Rules for Describing Original Items and Historical Collections," 1982-1996, http://www.tlcdelivers.com/tlc/crs/grph0199.htm (accessed 11 November 2003).
33. Helfand, "The Search for Ephemera Images," 110.
34. See Barbara Orbach, "So That Others May See: Tools for Cataloging Still Images," Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 11 (1990): 163-91
35. and Linda McRae and Lynda S. White, ArtMARC Sourcebook: Cataloging Art, Architecture and their Visual Images (Chicago: American Library Association, 1998).
36. Nancy E. Malan, "Organizing Photo Collections: An Introspective Approach," in Maygene F. Daniels and Timothy Walsh, eds., A Modern Archives Reader (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Service, 1984), 181.
37. Murtha Baca and Patricia Harpring, eds., "Categories for the Description of Works of Art," 2000, http://www.getty.edu/research/ institute/standards/cdwa/ (accessed 11 November 2003).
38. The CDWA maps to other metadata standards using the " crosswalks" available at J. Paul Getty Trust, "Introduction to Metadata: Pathways to Digital Information," 2000, http://www.getty.edu/ research/ institute/standards/intrometadata/3-crosswalks/index.html (accessed 11 November 2003).
39. Shifra M. Goldman and Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, Arte Chicano: A Comprehensive Annotated Bibliography of Chicano Art, 1965-1981 (Berkeley: Chicano Studies Library Publications Unit, University of California, 1985), 34.
40. Kunzle, Che Guevara.
41. Christine Nelson and Joel S. Rutstein, "Posters as a Library Resource: The International Poster Collection at Colorado State University," Collection Management 20, no. 1/2 (1995): 129.
42. "Promotional Goals Poster Categorization Tables" (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, n.d., photocopy).
43. J. Paul Getty Trust, "Art and Architecture Thesaurus Browser," 2000, http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/aat (accessed 11 November 2003).
44. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, "Thesaurus of Graphic Materials I: Subject Terms (TGM I)," 1995, http://www.loc.gov/rr/ print/tgm1/ (accessed 11 November 2003).
45. For a comparison of AAT and TGM, see Jane Greenberg, "Intellectual Control of Visual Archives: A Comparison between the Art and Architecture Thesaurus and the Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Materials," Cataloging and Classification Quarterly 16, no. 1 (1993): 87-101.
46. For a study of how image indexers use (or don't use) AAT, TGM, and other controlled vocabularies, see Linda McRae, "Indexing Images for Subject Access: Controlled Vocabularies in the VISION Project," Art Documentation 19, no. 2 (2000): 4-9.
47. J. Paul Getty Trust, "Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names Browser," 2000, http://www.getty.edu/ research/tools/vocabulary/tgn (accessed 11 November 2003).
48. Kathan Brown, Ink, Paper, Metal, Wood: How to Recognize Contemporary Artists' Prints (San Francisco, Calif.: Point Publications, 1992).
49. Also consult Luis Nadeau, Encyclopedia of Printing, Photographic, and Photomechanical Processes, 2 vols. (Fredericton, New Brunswick: Atelier Luis Nadeau, 1989-1990).
50. Museum of Modern Art, "What Is a Print?" http://www.moma.org/ whatisaprint/flash.html (accessed 11 November 2003).
51. Another useful Web resource, although focused on the art print, is The Max Kade - Erich H. Markel Department of Graphic Arts, "Image Maps of Printmaking Techniques," 1995-2001, http://www.ukans.edu/∼sma/techmap/ techmap.htm (accessed 11 November 2003).
52. For a description of the lengths to which a conservator might go with a poster, see Gay Tracy, "The Disposible Collectible: Conserving Posters," Northeast Document Conservation Center News 8, no. 2 (Fall 1998): 1.
53. Sherelyn Ogden, "Temperature, Relative Humidity, Light, and Air Quality: Basic Guidelines for Preservation," NEDCC Technical Leaflet, Section 2, Leaflet 1, 1999, http://www.nedcc.org/ plam3/tleaf21.htm (accessed 11 November 2003);
54. Mary Todd Glaser, "Storage Solutions for Oversized Paper Artifacts," NEDCC Technical Leaflet, no. Section 4, Leaflet 9, 1999, http://www.nedcc.org/plam3/tleaf49.htm (accessed 11 November 2003);
55. Susan Nash Munro, "Polyester Encapsulation," National Park Service Conserve O Gram, no. Number 13/3, 1993,http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/ publications/conserveogram/13-03.pdf (accessed 11 November 2003).
56. Diane Alper, "How to Flatten Folded or Rolled Paper Documents," National Parks Service Conserve O Gram, no. 13/2, 1993, http://www.cr.nps.gov/ museum/publications/conserveogram/13-02.pdf (accessed 11 November 2003).
57. Northeast Document Conservation Center, "Removal of Damaging Fasteners from Historic Documents," NEDCC Technical Leaflet, 1999, http://www.nedcc.org/leaflets/clips.htm (accessed 11 November 2003).
58. Henk J. Porck, "Mass Deacidification: An Update of Possibilities and Limitations," 1996, http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa/publ/porck.htm (accessed 11 November 2003).
59. Diane Vogt-O'Connor, "Selection of Materials for Scanning," in Handbook for Digital Projects: A Management Tool for Preservation and Access, edited by Maxine K. Sitts (Andover, Mass.: Northeast Document Conservation Center, 2000), 35-63.
60. See the definition of publication under the Copyright Act, U.S. Code 17 (1971) § 101.
61. A gray area is the protection afforded creators by the Visual Artists Rights Act, U.S. Code 17 (1990) § 106A, which covers limited edition prints (200 copies or fewer) if signed and numbered by the artist.
62. For a useful chart, see Lolly Gassaway, "When Works Pass into the Public Domain," 2001, http://www.unc.edu/∼unclng/public-d.htm (accessed 11 November 2003).
63. Bonnell, Iconography of Power, 277-78.
64. Nicholas Mirzoeff, "What Is Visual Culture?" in The Visual Culture Reader, edited by Nicholas Mirzoeff (London: Routledge, 1998), 6.