Since 1958, the Archives of American Art’s oral history program has preserved the distinct voices and human memory of the American art world in more than 2,500 interviews. Articulated draws on those interviews of the famous and the forgotten, featuring firsthand accounts from artists, dealers, writers, and other key figures, in dialogue with today’s thought leaders. Their expansive conversations and often surprising memories challenge us to see the world and our shared history in new and unimagined ways.
Credits:
Ben Gillespie, Arlene and Robert Kogod Secretarial Scholar for Oral History
Michelle Herman, Head of Digital Experience
Deanna Luu, Graphic Designer
Musical Theme: “Sound and Smoke," composed by Viet Cuong and performed by the Peabody Wind Ensemble with Harlan Parker conducting
Articulated is supported by the Alice L. Walton Foundation.
Artists often help us to break out of the paradigms to which we are knowingly and unknowingly accustomed. In this episode, New York- and Philadelphia-based artist Carolyn Lazard considers Emma Amos's resistances to white supremacy in the 1960s and Bruce Conner's disintegration of media's spectacular thrall in the 1970s as well as the legacies each artist left in their wake.
How do we understand our bodies in relation to the earth? In this episode, Columbus, Ohio-based artist Dionne Lee meditates on the wonder and danger of landscape through the work of Jerome Caja and Michelle Stuart, and their understandings of fragility, proneness, and seismic potential.
In this episode, San Antonio-based photographer Mari Hernandez considers the social, political, and formal trails blazed by Kathy Vargas, another San Antonio resident. From her encounters with institutional racism and misogyny, to her radical experimentation with photography as a medium, Vargas's vibrant career and activism have emboldened new generations of artists to expand and serve their communities.
In this episode, Brooklyn-based painter Maia Cruz Palileo navigates Cherokee painter Kay WalkingStick's journey with family, art, and history. From grappling with heritage to creating art that transcends boundaries of all kinds, follow the evolution of WalkingStick's practice along the path she has painted all her own.
Native Hawaiian lauhala weaver Katherine Kalehuapuakeaula “Lehua” Domingo (1935-) and Hopi ceramicist Al Qöyawayma (1938-) are two elder Indigenous artists and practitioners that each embody lifetimes of experiences through their creative practices. In this episode, guest curator Lehuauakea, a Native Hawaiian artist, draws connections between their work through their shared challenges and celebrations, and how these elements might define the artists’ work as contemporary, traditional, or something else entirely.
The Archives of American Art collects primary source materials—original letters, writings, preliminary sketches, scrapbooks, photographs, financial records and the like—that have significant research value for the study of art in America.
Find out how to give your papers, records, recordings, or other primary source material to the Archives of American Art.
Internship, fellowship, and volunteer opportunities provide students and lifelong learners with the ability to contribute to the study and preservation of visual arts records in America.
Original material can be consulted by appointment in our Washington, D.C. Headquarters.
Select holdings are available on microfilm at the Archives' offices in Washington, D.C. and at our New York Office.
Copies of unrestricted microfilm materials can be obtained through one of our affiliated research centers.
