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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.
This summer, the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art will showcase for the first time a selection of the personal address books of influential American artists. From Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner to Joseph Cornell and Ad Reinhardt, “Little Black Books: Address Books from the Archives of American Art” will uncover fascinating webs of personal and professional connections. The exhibition will be on view at the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery at the Smithsonian’s Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture from August 7 through November 1, 2015
In this era of digital communication, contacts are quickly updated, deleted and shared. But long before smartphones and computers, traditional address books stored this important and sometimes confidential information. Like diaries, these pocket-sized books, their dog-eared pages grimy with tangled ink and pencil marks, reveal much about their owners, creating a rich paper trail of relationships while tracking the journeys of family and friends.
“Little Black Books” will relate the names condensed in address books in unexpected ways to oral history recordings, correspondence, sketches and photographs in the Archives of American Art. Together, these primary resources give us a rare opportunity to glimpse into the everyday lives and social networks of artists.
Highlights include:
"Bringing together all of these primary resources from our own collection gives us a rare opportunity to see these artists, many of whom are well known, in a new and instructive light,” said Kate Haw, director of 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.
You can help make digitized historical documents more findable and useful by transcribing their text.
Visit the Archives of American Art project page in the Smithsonian Transcription Center now.
A virtual repository of a substantial cross-section of the Archives' most significant collections.