Intersession - Back to the Burchfield

Over the winter break, I plan on taking advantage of the time and location to make at least one visit to the Burchfield Penney archives to continue my research. My research will be driven by the direction my advisors and I decide to go in went we all meet together for the first time on Thursday. A major point of my thesis to resolve is determining what software I will use to develop my database. This discussion is critical to have now in order to make sure it can be supported by the archives. Additionally, the end users will have to be considered - is this going to be used by the archives only or will it be publicly accessible? The answers to these questions will likely lead to proposal revisions and may result in a section being added to the literature review. Research questions to continuously keep in my mind are what categories to include and the what is the scope of the artists' careers that I would like to include. Hopefully, the additional research and consultation will allow me to actually start constructing my final deliverable.

Artpark: What Makes the Experience Democratic?

The essence of my research has been to what extent Artpark functioned as a democratic experiment within the 1970s. However, defining what makes the Artpark experience "democratic" in the first has become problematic. After all, "democracy" is a word with many philosophical and functional connotations. Is it the way artists were selected to complete a residency that is democratic? Or is it how theoretically any member of the public could access the site-specific art and interact with the artist, effectively breaking down the studio walls? The artistic process itself could potentially be framed as democratic as well, especially if artists had control over where and how they executed their ideas.

These were questions I had in mind when I made my visit to the Burchfield Penney archives for research last Friday. Jennifer, the project archivist for the Artpark Archival Collection, told me that approaching the question from certain angles (such as how Artpark and its artists were funded) would require extremely intensive archival investigation. Therefore, she suggested to focus specifically on how Artpark functioned as a democratic experiment only for the artists involved. A topic of interest would be examining the types of institutions representing these artists before they were selected (were they artist-led?). The documents I looked over on Friday provided a good starting point for this investigation. The Visual Arts Program catalogs provided useful biographical information for the artists who currently have little to no presence online. A study conducted in 1978 by Arts Development Associates also revealed significant information, such as how only 30% of artists came to Artpark through a personal connection. According to the study, this proved that Artpark was "not a closed shop." The documents also provided a consistent account of Artpark's vision for the arts in its early years: to encourage the realization of experimental ideas in the arts and to engage the public in unorthodox ways.

Situating Artpark in a greater historical context has provided some interesting insights as well. Artpark was one of many efforts during the late '60s and 1970s to free art from the traditional gallery space, or, as Brian O'Doherty calls it, the "white cube." Artpark was far from being the only alternative art space in Western New York during the 1970s. Hallwalls, which was founded in 1974 (the same year Artpark's programs began), also dedicated itself to featuring innovative works from young artists at the time. I am also researching federal and state funding for the arts during this time period and how that may have influenced Artpark's operations. 

The Burchfield Penney Art Center, the location of the Artpark Archival Collection

Relationships Within Artpark and the Question of Its Success as a Democratic Art Space

For my senior thesis project, I intend to develop a relational database of the artists in residency at Artpark throughout its history. I will map out and visualize the network of connections between artists, staff, and the museums and art institutions these artists passed through both prior to and after their time at Artpark. A broad goal of this project would be to better understand the complex interpersonal and institutional relationships involved in the network and how it has evolved over time.

To compile information, I will use annual visual arts program catalogs from the Burchfield-Penney's Artpark Archival Collection as well as other easily accessible, inventoried materials including media releases, surveys, and administrative employee credentials. For example, from the surveys it is possible to tell which artists recommended other artists to come to the park, and from employee credentials it is possible to discern how the staff’s outside institutional relationships may have influenced the network of artists over time. Another dimension we are interested in would be determining the relationship between artists who were selected for the “major project” category (formed for avant-garde artists) and the "crafts" category and how the balance in the numbers between each category has changed over time.

An extensive historical chronicle of Artpark and its significance among outdoor sculpture park has been conducted through the former UB gallery exhibition “Artpark 1974-84.” The thesis for this contextualized Artpark as "a radical experiment in artist-public interaction and site-specificity that successfully balanced a populist mission with the creation of experimental art”(Firmin 2010).  According to curator Sandra Firmin, the park welcomed artists of diverse backgrounds and allowed them to experiment with art in a spectacular geographic and mythic location. By uncovering the complex network of relationships between chosen artists, staff, and outside institutions, my working research question will be to determine to what extent Artpark adhered to its populist principles. To what extent was Artpark turly the democratic arts program it aimed to be?


Artpark 1974-1984

Firmin, Sandra Q. Artpark 1974-1984. Princeton Architectural Press, 2010.

Lessons in Research, Both Old and New

Prior to taking this class, I have had some experience with literature reviews as well as ideas related to close reading. I had spent one summer in 2015 gathering and reviewing articles related to disaster management simulations and the evaluation of pedagogic components of games. At the summer's conclusion, I wrote two literature reviews that would eventually become the basis for the chapter, "GIS and Serious Games" in the book Comprehensive Geographic Systems. For the research component, I was taught to condense my notes regarding literature into separate slides, where I would write a few quotes or key points. This way, I could easily extract them later if I wanted to use them in my paper. 

It turns out this method was quite helpful for me and I do not believe the research approach is much different for the field of museum studies. However, this class has taught me useful strategies for better optimizing my close reading. I particularly like the way we approach the dissection of articles by determining the question, methodology, evidence, and conclusion. This approach has helped me better understand research methodologies (namely qualitative ones) and also makes it easier for me to compare articles and their arguments side by side. Closely scrutinizing evidence has also helped me more clearly see the flaws in the author's arguments. For example, for this week I read the article "“Aesthetic Regard for Nature in Environmental and Land Art” by Emily Brady. Although I felt her argument defending land art was solid, closely examining the evidence revealed that she may have relied too much on artist testimony.This class has additionally helped with locating resources and better managing them via Zotero. Previously, I had mainly settled for vague keywords and sometimes less than stellar databases. For my paper, I expect to integrate my previous experiences with the lessons I have recently learned to best optimize the research process. 

B. Tomaszewski, A. Konovitz-Davern, D.I. Schwartz, J. Szarzynski, L. Siedentopp, A. Miller, J. Hartz, GIS and Serious Games, in: T.J. Cova, M.-H. Tsou (Eds.) Comprehensive Geographic Information Systems, Elsevier, 2017, pp. 15 pages.

Brady, Emily. "Aesthetic regard for nature in environmental and land art." Ethics Place and Environment (Ethics, Place & Environment (Merged with Philosophy and Geography)) 10.3 (2007): 287-300.

Thesis Topics

During my internship at the Burchfield Penney Arts Center, I had briefly spent time processing files from the Artpark Archival Collection. Obtained by the Burchfield in 2013, the collection contains 180 boxes of textual records and over 80,000 images documenting the history of Artpark and its administration. Located in Lewiston, New York, Artpark has provided residencies to diverse local and international artists throughout its history. Many of the artists represented by Artpark are present in major public and private collections. Artpark has been a major agent in supporting emerging artists while making public art accessible to the masses.   

I had wanted do a project related to local history, and I believe there is a lot of untapped potential in the Artpark Archival Collection. The collection is currently only partly processed, making historical research using the documents challenging. However, using the information we already know and the resources available (such as old catalogues), there is likely opportunity for a project that can better make sense of the cultural, administrative and social history surrounding the park and its emerging artists. Potential topics of interest include where these participating artists came from and how artists may have been connected (and how this may have influenced who would in turn be selected for residencies in subsequent years). Although I do not have a specific research question or project proposal yet, I do envision the project itself would be accessible, potentially as a micro digital humanities project. I had contacted the project archivist for this collection and hopefully it will become clearer over the next few weeks how I can best foster greater understanding of this massive collection.