PAFA is committed to the health and safety of our visitors and staff. The PAFA administration is closely monitoring the global and local situation with regard to the 2019 coronavirus disease, COVID-19, including advisories from the World Health Organization (WHO), Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and local authorities.
Follow PAFA on Facebook (PAFAcademy) and on Instagram (@pafacademy) for immediate updates. For additional resources and announcements, please visit PAFA’s website.
PAFA Archives staff will continue to serve the public remotely by responding to emailed requests (archivist@pafa.org). While the Archives are closed, we invite the public to explore our online resources by visiting our digital archives ( http://pafaarchives.org/).
Though the PAFA campus remains closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are pleased to announce that work on the NEH Project – Rediscovering John Rhoden recommences remotely this week!
Due to the present circumstances, we are operating at a somewhat limited capacity and, after over three months away, we will be taking some time to refamiliarize ourselves with the work at hand. Remotely, we are able to continue cataloging our digitized holdings, writing blog posts, and exploring different approaches for curating and presenting the digitized Rhoden papers.
This time away from the project has given us the opportunity to reflect on our work. The preservation and promotion of the tangible remnants of John Rhoden’s legacy is an important and exciting responsibility. We feel so privileged to be able to continue our work to make this legacy widely accessible.
We will continue to update you as we learn more about how COVID-19 will impact our ability to return to the physical collection. For now, we will return to regular blog posts and updates on our continued progress.
Kelin Baldridge Project Archivist for the John Rhoden papers
ABOUT THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES
Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at: www.neh.gov.
Contributed by Kelin Baldridge, Project Archivist for the John Rhoden papers
Over here in the archives, we recently stumbled upon this enormous planning sketch for one of John Rhoden’s sculptures. The figures depicted in the sketch looked familiar, so we decided to do some digging within the papers to see if we could contextualize it.
Archives staff with the planning sketch for John Rhoden’s Beings Anthropomorphic.
Photographs in the collection revealed that this sketch was for a sculpture titled Beings Anthropomorphic. Captions on the photographs indicate that this sculpture was created specifically for the African American Museum in Philadelphia in 1975. There are no documents or correspondence directly related to this artwork and, as such, we have been unable to confirm the information on the photograph captions.
A label on the photograph suggests the sculpture was installed at the African American Museum in Philadelphia in the mid to late 1970s.
From the photographs, we do know that the artwork was completed and installed somewhere, but we cannot be sure that it was actually installed in the African American Museum in Philadelphia. Furthermore, the sculpture’s current whereabouts are unknown. However, what we do have relating to the sketch could potentially reveal something about John’s artistic planning process.
Small-scale model for Beings Anthropomorphic.
Above is a photograph of a small-scale model of Beings Anthropomorphic. It is evident that this was an earlier model given the slight differences in the figures. Below is a photograph of John with his planning sketch. It is interesting to note the grid imposed on the sketch as well as the inclusion of the weight and cost of the figures.
John Rhoden with a planning sketch for Beings Anthropomorphic on January 7, 1975.
Close-up of the planning sketch including the weights and costs of figures (left: 60 lbs, $300; right: 30 lbs, $150).
Having evidence of multiple objects produced in the process of creating an artwork gives an interesting view into both the evolution of Rhoden’s ideas and his creative and logistical artistic planning. John’s papers are full of items that contextualize each other, and give a more complete picture of John’s life and work.
This project, Rediscovering John W. Rhoden: Processing, Cataloging, Rehousing, and Digitizing the John W. Rhoden papers, is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency.
ABOUT THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES
Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at: www.neh.gov.
A BIG CONGRATULATIONS to Dr. Anna Marley, PAFA’s Curator of Historical American Art and Director of the Center for the Study of the American Artist (and my boss!). Anna has been named a Center for Curatorial Leadership Fellow for 2020!
Dr. Anna Marley, Curator of Historical American Art and Director for the Center of the Study of the American Artist
The Fellowship includes instruction from Columbia Business School faculty, exposure to real-world challenges faced by cultural institutions, and a week long residency shadowing a Director at another major museum.
I am extremely proud of Anna and all her accomplishments (she recently celebrated her 10-year work anniversary at PAFA this past March). Anna is one of the strongest proponents of PAFA’s Archives program and much of her work affirms PAFA’s place in the American Art canon. I am grateful to have an amazing and supportive mentor here at PAFA! My favorite Anna quote, “There is no American Art without PAFA.”
On behalf of the Museum Team, we wish everyone a very happy holiday season! This past week, PAFA staff and faculty came together for our annual holiday party celebrating over food, music, and prizes!
Three members of the museum team (Mark Knobelsdorf, Barbara Katus, and myself) were among the raffle prize winners!
Barbara Katus and I designed and constructed a PAFA gingerbread house. It includes flying buttresses, mosaic tile entry, and custom icing roof.
We want to thank everyone for their continued support. Happy Holidays!
I want to wrap up by extending my thanks to IMLS for the grant that made this project possible. Overall, I’m incredibly proud of the work I did here at PAFA, and there are so many images that I can’t wait to send to people to discuss, once everything is up and running online. (That old adage that ‘everyone has a twin’ is more true than I thought – I’ve lost count of how many double takes I’ve done, thinking the subject of a painting from over a hundred years ago was actually a friend of mine now. Also, there are so many adorable dogs the world deserves to see.)
Even aside from all the technical (that is, marketable) skills I’ve learned, working with these materials has been an object lesson in how small the world can be – for example, the first time I saw the painting “Three Friends,” by Joseph Rodefer DeCamp, was not in installation photographs from the 1912 Annual Exhibition, but hanging in the main library of my alma mater six years ago, dourly watching over thousands of undergrads going about their academic lives. It’s little things like that that were, for me, the most exciting part – those moments of connection between Back Then, and Now.
I had the amazing opportunity to attend the Society of American Archivists’ (SAA) Annual Conference in Portland, OR this year. The conference provided valuable professional development and networking opportunities that all archivists should take advantage of (if you have the opportunity).
Events such as the Teaching With Primary Sources: “Unconference” was particularly interesting. The all-day event generously hosted by the Portland Art Museum had the theme of “Aligning with Allies.” It was an informative and fun day, featuring a variety of workshops in the morning and an afternoon full of attendee-driven conversations (over 100 professionals attended!) covering all aspects of teaching with primary sources. I definitely learned a lot and I hope to implement some fresh ideas and new knowledge to benefit PAFA’s archives program.
I also had the chance to network with fellow (museum) archivists who shared new ideas and discussed their ongoing projects. One symposium included presentations by MoMa (digital portal for all exhibitions), Detroit Institute of Arts Museum (relocating their archives and restablishing a proper archival program), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (archiving email), and the Wisconsin Veterans Museum (digital oral histories).
Leo will be working as the Project Archivist Intern for the recently acquired George Harding Sr. papers. He has a bachelors degree in history from St. Joseph’s University and a graduate degree in public history from La Salle University. Leo has volunteer experience at the Camden County Historical Society working on cataloging and inventorying projects for their audio collection. He has a strong desire to gain more experience on how to process archival collections.
The Center is happy to offer Leo a chance to take a lead on processing an archival collection that includes a variety of records (correspondence, photographs, diaries, sketches, and art) from start to finish. PAFA’s Director of Archives, Hoang Tran, will serve as his mentor during this internship.
Leo hopes to stay in the nonprofit/museum field and continue working on paper and object based collections.
Adil is an MFA student here at PAFA. He has dreams of pursuing a PhD and wanted to gain more experience in the research process. What better way than to research PAFA’s rich history? The archives has a unique collection of student records (not protected by FERPA) that contain a wealth of information. If you examine the the student files separately, they provide rich biographical information and personal insights. Adil will be working on this inventory project for the summer to uncover some of the hidden stories of PAFA students.
Don’t forget to check out Adil’s Instagram to see some of his art!
