Inside the Archives

Unboxed Lunch is a 30-minute online program that takes visitors on a behind-the-scenes journey of archival discovery.  One of the Archives' staff guides viewers through the process of exploring a newly acquired collection.

The Archives of American Art’s online initiative Mysteries of the Archives of American Art involves the public in helping identify unknown figures in photographs across the Archives collections. Please join us in solving these mysteries by exploring selected photos.

With generous support from the Leon Polk Smith Foundation and in collaboration with the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, the Archives conducted five oral histories with Native artists in 2021.

To document the cascade of public health, social, and financial crises set in motion by COVID-19, the Archives of American Art created an oral history series that recorded responses to the global pandemic across the American art world.

With generous funding from Barbara G. Fleischman, the Archives of American Art partnered with the Center for the History of Collecting in America at the Frick Art Reference Library of The Frick Collection to create a series of 20 oral history interviews of art collectors. The Archives together with the Frick developed a list of potential interview candidates across the US whose unique stories contribute to the history of collecting and patronage in America.

Explore the Archives' newest online resources documenting American art related archival collections in Chicago made possible with funding from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

With funding from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Archives has conducted interviews of Chicago artists and art dealers for the Archives’ oral history program. The interviews gather a wealth of information on Chicago’s art history, adding to the Archives’ existing in-depth interviews in and about Chicago.

A collection of thirty interviews of people who had firsthand knowledge of Mark Rothko.

A collection of 390 oral history interviews with artists and arts administrators involved in aspects of government sponsorship of the arts in the 1930s.

An initiative to collect oral history interviews of twelve individuals in the circle of Viola Frey.

Image: Viola Frey with monumental figures and paintings in her studio, Oakland, CA, 1987. Image courtesy of M. Lee Fatherree; artworks by Viola Frey © Artists' Legacy Foundation/ Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY 

An initiative to collect twenty-five oral history interviews with visual artists, art writers, curators, and other key figures in the art world who were active at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

A focused oral history initiative of interviews with twenty artists who produced major works of art for the Fine Arts or Art in Architecture program of the U.S. General Services Administration.

A collection of twenty-one oral history interviews with prominent women in the visual arts; a project funded by the A G Foundation.

A documentation project covering the life and works of America's leading craft artists through recorded and transcribed oral history interviews funded by Nanette L. Laitman.