A New Exhibition Offers an Inside Look at the Archives of American Art

“Staff Picks” features staff members’ favorite artifacts from the Archives’ vast collections, including selections by the AAA’s new director, Anne Helmreich.

On June 1 at the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery, the Archives of American Art opened its first exhibition since the beginning of the pandemic. “Staff Picks” borrows its title from a bookstore’s shelf, but instead of novels or nonfiction, these selections are the favorite items of staff who comb through the millions of documents, thousands of artifacts, and nearly three thousand oral history interviews that constitute the Archives of American Art.  

The exhibition gives viewers a glimpse into the Archives—the most widely-used research center in the world for visual art in the United States—and the staff who manage it. The result is a uniquely personal show that takes the work of people who work mostly behind the scenes and brings it to the forefront.

The exhibition’s curators, Susan Cary and Josh T. Franco, solicited items from their coworkers and had each person write the label for their chosen artifact. Their own selections are included in the display.

Ms. Cary, the Registrar and Collections Manager, manages outgoing loans for exhibitions and oversees the shipping of collections. She chose Cards made from postage stamps from Polly Thayer (Starr)’s papers.

Thayer was a Boston painter who was traveling through Japan in 1923 when she was only 18. Her ship was about to leave Yokohama when the Great Kantō earthquake struck. In the aftermath, she nursed the injured aboard what became a makeshift hospital. The cards, personalized with Thayer’s initials or the names of her family and friends, feature botanical shapes cut from postage stamps and were meant to provide hope in a time of devastation. Today, they offer reflection on both the fragility and resilience of the human spirit. It is unclear whether Thayer created the cards herself, but she saved them for decades after the earthquake. The care she took of them stood out to Ms. Cary as indicative of their personal value and influence over her future artwork.

As the head of collecting, Dr. Franco oversees both the curatorial and oral history teams. The curatorial team works closely with many artists to bring to the Smithsonian the primary sources that document their life’s work. This process often happens in the later stages of an artist’s life, and losing someone you come to know quite intimately becomes an inevitable part of the job. One poignant example of that is the renowned artist, Jaime Davidovich, who Dr. Franco chose for inclusion in the exhibition.

Having worked with television as the primary medium of his career, Davidovich died while Dr. Franco was working with him to collect his papers for the Archives. Davidovich’s innovative work used televisions and video equipment as materials for sculpture, and he carved out a space for artists on cable TV. He was best known for his work on The Live! Show, a weekly program that featured everything from artistic performances to political and social commentary. For the exhibition, Dr. Franco chose Davidovich’s circa 1974 notebook emblazoned with a collaged image of a television on its cover and filled with sketches and personal notes.

The exhibition also includes the selections of Anne Helmreich, the new director of the Archives of American Art. Dr. Helmreich came to the Smithsonian in February after her tenure at the J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles, where she served as the Associate Director of the Getty Foundation.

Dr. Helmreich’s chosen artifacts offer some insight into her vision for the future of the Archives of American Art, which she sees as “America’s storyteller for the arts” and a relevant resource “not just for the art world but for anyone interested in the American experience and how creativity has taken shape here.”  

In her words, “we cannot understand the American experience without art.” Of course, not all artistic expression has been validated as an equal part of the American experience, which prompts the question of how and why a particular work becomes significant. Galleries are major sites for creating that value; gathering artists, critics, and patrons; and promoting discussions. For better or worse, they have long held power in assigning value to American art.  

One of Dr. Helmreich’s chosen works is a brochure from the Cinque Gallery, a New York establishment launched in 1969. The brochure shows the slave ship La Amistad, on which Sengbe Pieh (also known as Joseph Cinqué, for whom the gallery is named) freed himself and other enslaved people in 1839. Cinqué and others aboard the ship were tried in court for their revolt and eventually won their case before the Supreme Court.

The brochure communicates the gallery’s clear commitment to the African American community, particularly to Black artists who were frequently excluded from gallery spaces and whose work was routinely culturally and monetarily undervalued.

Under Dr. Helmreich’s leadership, the Archives of American Art is working to acquire and maintain a stunningly diverse public collection of materials on American art and artists that will be permanently safeguarded, shared, and valued as an integral part of the American story.

This exhibition offers a sense of the important work our colleagues are doing at the Archives of American Art, and I hope you have an opportunity to see it.   

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