Timeline:
After receiving the 16 boxes of Harry Brorby's life (as we know it), the past few weeks have posed both an exciting and daunting prospect. In efforts to organize and make sense of this information, the designated 'Harry Brorby Timeline' group has sought basic dates such as births, deaths, births of his artworks, and of exhibitions. In addition to this, we kick-started the everlasting attempt to document Harry's network of family, friends, co-workers...the possibilities continue today. Thus far, we have discovered a few apparently strong connections, initiated correspondence with them, and plan to record an oral history with one of them them--so far, which seeks to address questions pertinent to our research, as well as that of our classmates. We look forward to engaging in and expanding upon this network. Looking ahead: organization.
Organization:
We continued digging through boxes to sort through and categorize materials. It has been difficult to skim over the mass amounts of information and handwritten letters in order to find what folders they fit into, but we are slowly picking away at it. One of the students found Brorby’s daughter Katie's last tooth--yes, a tooth. Its things like these that mystify us as to why they were kept, but it was obviously sentimental to him. Then again we run into the problem of how does one archive a tooth? In this same week, a list of 73 works by brorby was compiled in alphabetical order. This may be of use to the Provenance group, but locations and prices are still being looked for as we sift through all of the materials. Most of this information was found in many of Brorby’s exhibition pamphlets. The rest of the time we have spent categorizing and putting photographs into protective sleeves - Brorby kept an astonishing amount of photos, both his own as well as his father’s. All in all it has been a slow process, but an interesting one at that.
Provenance:
This past week we began the process of creating a catalogue that compounds the history of Harry Brorby’s artwork. We are looking through all of Brorby’s personal records, like exhibition pamphlets and letters, in search of any clues regarding the sale, ownership, or display of his pieces. Luckily, Brorby kept rather extensive records and we have come across many of his correspondences with galleries inquiring about showing his work as well as letters from customers. It is also evident that his father played some role in the sales and commerce aspect of Brorby’s artistic career. Some highlights of our findings so far are a stack of photos of some of his art pieces with sales information on the back as well as boxes containing slides of his work (although they are not labeled which presents another challenge). Currently we are continuing to build a base of lists of works and associated people/galleries in order to dig deeper into each pieces history.
Digitization:
This week the digitization crew focused on establishing a workflow for digitizing photos of Melvin Brorby. Austin and I started by scanning the photos in batches on the book scanner. We then when through the process of extracting the individual photos from the larger scan. Are current issue is how we systemize the organization of the photos. The archivist group is in a constant state of finding new photos. We are starting to establish a inbox/outbox system that will subside the confusion. We have also come across a number of photos that need to documented in another format other than using a scanner because of the coating causing glare. By next week we are looking to start scanning other media.
After receiving the 16 boxes of Harry Brorby's life (as we know it), the past few weeks have posed both an exciting and daunting prospect. In efforts to organize and make sense of this information, the designated 'Harry Brorby Timeline' group has sought basic dates such as births, deaths, births of his artworks, and of exhibitions. In addition to this, we kick-started the everlasting attempt to document Harry's network of family, friends, co-workers...the possibilities continue today. Thus far, we have discovered a few apparently strong connections, initiated correspondence with them, and plan to record an oral history with one of them them--so far, which seeks to address questions pertinent to our research, as well as that of our classmates. We look forward to engaging in and expanding upon this network. Looking ahead: organization.
Organization:
We continued digging through boxes to sort through and categorize materials. It has been difficult to skim over the mass amounts of information and handwritten letters in order to find what folders they fit into, but we are slowly picking away at it. One of the students found Brorby’s daughter Katie's last tooth--yes, a tooth. Its things like these that mystify us as to why they were kept, but it was obviously sentimental to him. Then again we run into the problem of how does one archive a tooth? In this same week, a list of 73 works by brorby was compiled in alphabetical order. This may be of use to the Provenance group, but locations and prices are still being looked for as we sift through all of the materials. Most of this information was found in many of Brorby’s exhibition pamphlets. The rest of the time we have spent categorizing and putting photographs into protective sleeves - Brorby kept an astonishing amount of photos, both his own as well as his father’s. All in all it has been a slow process, but an interesting one at that.
Provenance:
This past week we began the process of creating a catalogue that compounds the history of Harry Brorby’s artwork. We are looking through all of Brorby’s personal records, like exhibition pamphlets and letters, in search of any clues regarding the sale, ownership, or display of his pieces. Luckily, Brorby kept rather extensive records and we have come across many of his correspondences with galleries inquiring about showing his work as well as letters from customers. It is also evident that his father played some role in the sales and commerce aspect of Brorby’s artistic career. Some highlights of our findings so far are a stack of photos of some of his art pieces with sales information on the back as well as boxes containing slides of his work (although they are not labeled which presents another challenge). Currently we are continuing to build a base of lists of works and associated people/galleries in order to dig deeper into each pieces history.
Digitization:
This week the digitization crew focused on establishing a workflow for digitizing photos of Melvin Brorby. Austin and I started by scanning the photos in batches on the book scanner. We then when through the process of extracting the individual photos from the larger scan. Are current issue is how we systemize the organization of the photos. The archivist group is in a constant state of finding new photos. We are starting to establish a inbox/outbox system that will subside the confusion. We have also come across a number of photos that need to documented in another format other than using a scanner because of the coating causing glare. By next week we are looking to start scanning other media.