The Smithsonian's Archives of American Art

CONTENT The Archives of American Art offers free digital access to robust collections through a richly engaging website. Founded in Detroit in 1954 as a microfilm depository, the Archives joined the Smithsonian in 1970. Content currently comprises more than 20 million letters, photographs, film, financial records, diaries, scrapbooks, and audiovisual recordings related to the visual arts. The repository also houses more than 2,300 interviews and oral histories about art, artists, and art-related innovations and techniques.

The site currently provides access to 486 fully digitized collections, with downloadable images of papers, letters, records, images, photographs, and transparencies. Of particular note are the materials digitized by the Terra Foundation Center for American Art. These digital collections represent a considerable cross-section of the Archives’ most significant holdings—270 archival collections, comprising three million images and an additional 16,000 individually cataloged documents. Featured collections include the Ray Yoshida papers, a collection of 6,780 images from the 20th-century painter, collagist, and educator, and 18,430 Depression-era images from the Federal Art Project’s Photographic Division.

Researchers will want to explore the growing oral history collections offered in this database. Since 1958, the Archives of American Art has collected interviews, reminiscences, and observations from key artists. Although the entire Oral History Program recording collection is not available for listening, researchers can explore a wide range of special projects; these include “Mark Rothko and His Times,” with 30 associated interviews, and the “Pandemic Oral History Project,” featuring 85 videotaped interviews with artists, teachers, curators, and administrators.

USABILITY A search bar at the top of the resource’s inviting home page allows for keyword-searching of the collections, oral history interviews, or all content. Featured and popular materials are located on a carousel in the center of the page, and links to podcasts, current exhibitions, blog posts, and news are arranged at the bottom.

The search page allows for natural-language searching but also offers advanced search options. Here, users can search by collection type, the subject’s name and/or occupation (archivist, conservator, dealer), topic (domestic architecture, glass-painting and -staining), or theme (Latino and Latin American, sketches and sketchbooks). Clicking on any entry opens up the item’s information page, which includes the title, creator, tags, and additional metadata such as citation information, size, associated works, and a rights statement. Images can be viewed on the page or downloaded (the download feature opens a large, high-resolution version of the selected image).

Oral histories can be viewed on the main search page and are also available through special projects links on the Oral History Program page. Clicking into the links takes researchers to each interview’s informational page, which offers a detailed overview, a transcript (also available as a PDF), and an audio excerpt if available. Currently, full audio files are not available online, though they can be requested by contacting the reference desk.

PRICING The Archives of American Art is a freely available online resource.

VERDICT This outstanding resource offers opportunities to research and explore carefully curated primary sources that document the vibrant history of the visual arts in the United States. Informative, stimulating, and free to all, this archive is a delight.