What comes to mind when you think of the word "archive"? Is it a pristine, climate-controlled vault or a dusty, musty corner of the basement? Host Gianofer Fields talks with Chazen Chief of Staff Lindsay Grinstead to learn about the origins of the Chazen's archives. She follows up with archivist Jordan Craig to get a better picture of how archiving works. And she talks with graduate student and archives assistant Raichelle Johnson, who calls the archives "my happy place."
Meet Me at the Chazen is a podcast about the the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Chazen Museum of Art, the largest collecting museum in the Big Ten. As we report what’s happening here, we'll also explore what it means to be an art museum at a public university and how art museums can help enrich and strengthen the communities they serve. Meet Me at the Chazen theme and incidental music is “Swinging at the Pluto Lounge,” composed and performed by Marvin Tate and friends, and is used with permission of the artists.
We'd love to connect - find us on Facebook and Instagram!
What comes to mind when you think of the word "archive"? Is it a pristine, climate-controlled vault or a dusty, musty corner of the basement? Host Gianofer Fields talks with Chazen Chief of Staff Lindsay Grinstead to learn about the origins of the Chazen's archives. She follows up with archivist Jordan Craig to get a better picture of how archiving works. And she talks with graduate student and archives assistant Raichelle Johnson, who calls the archives "my happy place."
Meet Me at the Chazen is a podcast about the the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Chazen Museum of Art, the largest collecting museum in the Big Ten. As we report what’s happening here, we'll also explore what it means to be an art museum at a public university and how art museums can help enrich and strengthen the communities they serve. Meet Me at the Chazen theme and incidental music is “Swinging at the Pluto Lounge,” composed and performed by Marvin Tate and friends, and is used with permission of the artists.
We'd love to connect - find us on Facebook and Instagram!
Gianofer Fields 00:02
Welcome to Season Three of Meet Me at the Chazen. I'm your host, Gianofer Fields. In this season, we'll cover a question closer to our hearts that we might realize or even want to admit: what to do with the things we need or want to keep, but don't necessarily use in our daily lives? Lindsay Grinstead is the Chief of Staff for the Chazen and she knows what I'm talking about.
Lindsay Grinstead 00:28
You probably have a box of stuff and some dusty, crusty closet somewhere. Like we all do, right. And the museum does too. Except we had like 50, 70, I don't know, 100 boxes or more in the basement.
Gianofer Fields 00:43
Our focus this season is on the Chazen archive. It's huge. Not to worry, we won't be in this alone. Jordan, Craig is the archivist.
Jordan Craig 00:53
I don't usually think of an archive as a noun. It's more like archive as a verb. Like what does it mean to archive something rather than what is the archive, because I feel like people generally have some sense of what it is, but don't necessarily know what it means to archive something.
Gianofer Fields 01:12
Raichelle Johnson is the project manager.
Raichelle Johnson 01:16
An archive is, my happy place? No, um, I think it's like a living dictionary or thesaurus, maybe maybe even an encyclopedia, I think it could be all three of those things. Something that is constantly growing and gaining information. With almost a limitless point of view, I guess.
Gianofer Fields 01:43
Making decades of information accessible can be daunting and costly. So how does a major university museum find the time and the money to tackle this task? According to Lindsay Grinstead, by applying for funding.
Lindsay Grinstead 01:59
So the Mellon grant is really cool, because it helped us solve an issue that the museum had and the university had together, which was digital preservation and archiving. So you probably have a box of stuff in some dusty, crusty closet somewhere, like we all do, right. And the Museum does, too, except we had like 50, 70, I don't know, 100 boxes or more. In the basement, we also had dusty, crusty things on files, digital files, that were old formats that may not survive in the future as technology evolves, things like that. And the university through UW Libraries had already been building infrastructure to solve this problem for their data, and finding ways to preserve it and building the background structure. What that includes, I have no idea, because it's a lot of programming and tech and really complicated stuff. So we didn't know either. But I think through conversations with Amy, our director, and Lisa Carter, who was the head of the libraries at that time, realized that we have some commonalities, that we have these things, living in different places, and how can we sort of bring them to light, bring them literally out of the basement out of their boxes and make them accessible to more people, and make sure that they last for a lifetime or more, knowing what we know today about technology.
Gianofer Fields 03:28
I feel like I'm coming to the museum world from a different pathway. And so in my head, I just imagined, like some, I don't know, a room that you could also mistake for a surgery arena, everything clean and white and pristine. And you have to have special clothes and gloves and a hood on to go down there and see this stuff.
Lindsay Grinstead 03:47
Yeah so it was kind of a mix of things. And it's, it reflects sort of what is the organization value the most right, and all art museums are going to tell you that their doc files, the files that they have on every artwork that they have acquired, are pristinely kept. And we have a whole special room for them here and a whole filing system and all of that. And we also have our entire collection available digitally online, which is a great feat for an art museum in and of itself. But it's only a piece of the puzzle. So the other files that I'm talking about, were archival documents about the building in the museum and how that came to be. And the exhibition files. So exhibition files typically don't live with the object. So say we had a Picasso exhibition in 1976 that we brought here, and it had a bunch of other loans, and it had our Picasso piece in it too. You may not find that information in in the artwork file. That was in a box downstairs. But that information is actually really useful to people researching Picasso or you know, working on a dissertation, looking for a book and things like that. And it's information that's typically not available for museums. You can learn a lot about their collection and there are artworks, but the sort of history of the institution, and how those artworks have been used through exhibitions, and different installations and things over the years, is not as widely accessible, because that's not what we're using day to day in the office. So we're not, you know, we're not valuing it as much. And we're sticking it downstairs.
Gianofer Fields 05:19
What did the Mellon grant allow this particular institution, the Chazen, to do with all that sort of all that information?
Lindsay Grinstead 05:26
Yeah. So I think it really did two things. It allowed us to, like I said, bring all these things to light and give access. But how did it do that? Mellon funded the infrastructure for us to build the technology side of it, to make a process for archiving, so that in the future, when we acquire new objects, and have exhibitions, there is a clear procedure for how we archive all of that material and make sure that it's preserved for the future in perpetuity. Right. So Mellon set that up by funding positions of programmers that built the technology over within, they're working primarily in the libraries. It funded Jordan's position, who's really sort of worked on the museum side of things, and providing all of the data and information and processing all of the archives. So when I thought of it first, you know, I thought, well, can we just scan everything and like, put it in a file, you know, that's like my idea of archiving, but it's not that simple. Because actually, the the files that we have today, just like you probably remember, using a floppy disk, can become obsolete in the future. So the libraries had the expertise to tell us, these files aren't aren't good in perpetuity, they're not preserved correctly, we have an idea of how to do it. And Mellon helped us fund that. And I also should mention, that part of the Mellon grant was that the university would match a portion of it, a significant portion. So we also had to get the university behind this idea, which thankfully, they did, because part of the justification is that wasn't just for the Chazen collection, that once we have this process, and infrastructure in terms of technology, that it can be a blueprint for other collections on campus, and even other universities to do the same. There are lots of other collections on campus that deal with the same thing that have their data and parts of their collection in all different formats and places. And so the idea was that, you know, by by being the pilot for this, that we could create something that could be duplicated, and that makes the whole university more accessible, which is really, you know, sounds cheesy, but it is in line with the Wisconsin idea that the idea of education should, and the things that happen here at the University of Wisconsin are accessible beyond just the classroom. And the awesome thing about this project now is, you know, when you go and search on UW library's main catalog site, if you're searching for something like the Picasso example, you're gonna get all their books and information that they have. But you may also get the link for the piece in our collection, which includes, you know, the background information on any exhibitions that we've had about Picasso, or any times it's been mentioned in other publications. And that just like, explodes our access, because now we're not counting on people coming to our site, to go through our collection search, anyone in the world now can go through UW site and have access to all these things that, you know, weren't being seen before.
Gianofer Fields 08:19
As I learned more about the archive, it makes me think of information that I want to share when we think about garage sales. And we think about how sales and we think about, what do you call those? Estate sales. When we think about estate sales, part of what makes them exciting is understanding, well, I prefer an estate sale to, to go into a thrift store because I can see the full picture of the individual when I'm in their house picking up these things. And so then I think about things that we may have as individuals that we may want to leave for someone else, how much information, you know, knowing this now makes me think about how much information I want to include with that object if I leave it for the next person.
Lindsay Grinstead 09:00
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think we've talked about this before, but like I have my house is 124 years old. I have like an antique engagement ring. And those are the two things that have I could ask for like any genie in the bottle question of Could I see a history of these things? I would love to see who wore this ring for the last 100 years? What did my house look like 50, 60 years ago, all that information has just vanished. Because, you know, there wasn't a system for setting up, you know, people didn't take the time to archive and preserve that information. Or maybe they did and it was lost because it was in a format that, you know, didn't survive. So it's really exciting that, you know, that's the type of thing that we're trying to do here is make sure that that that information is accessible and lives on. I kind of I don't know, Jordan would say about this, but I kind of think about it like ancestry.com to, you know, you're all of a sudden you're putting all this out there and we don't know who's going to find value or information from it. But you're putting all the dots out there and telling other people okay, now you can connect them if you want If you find something you see here that helps your research or, you know, helps an acquisition that you're trying to make in another museum, we're just trying to, you know, increase the availability of that information and then see what connections people draw from it. That's my understanding of it, as someone who was involved in the process, just, that's part of, you know, my job as chief of staff, kind of knowing a little bit of everything that's going on. And I might not be the primary person writing the grant or executing all of the activities that come out of it, but sort of, you know, sitting in and making sure that then I can sort of bridge the gaps across the museum to help the project come to life. And so from my perspective, that's what the Mellon grant feels like in the way that it's been explained to me and the the way that I sort of understand it now, but I think it will be really cool for you to actually go through the process, because I'm interested to, to see how it, how it looks and feels and sounds from start to finish.
Lindsay Grinstead 09:45
Jordan Craig is digital asset coordinator, multimedia archivist, and self-professed nerd for this season. So one of the things about the archive that I've been wrestling with, since this project appeared, is I kind of have, I think, a very limited idea of what an archive is, and how an archive is used. So I'm going to ask you as much as you can, in layman's terms, in Gianofer-speak, what is an archive? What is this thing that we're standing in this place that we're standing at right now?
Jordan Craig 10:58
Actually, can I get it in Gianofer-speak first? Like, what do you think?
Gianofer Fields 11:12
To me an archive is where you keep things that for whatever reason, are no longer used in a daily way, but you may need access to them. In my house, my archive would be all the old cords, and power packs, and headphones. Because I never know when something's gonna break. And I might need to use something else to make it last. For example, if you notice, my shoelaces are different. This morning, I broke my right shoelace. And I had to rip apart a cat toy to create a shoelace for my shoe. So that's kind of like my way of thinking about an archive. Anything that I would have in my house or anything that would maybe serve that purpose. Could this go back in it? I don't know. Could this become a cat toy? Again? I don't know. I kind of like the thicker shoelace. So maybe not. But it's that idea of, you have something that has some value, even though it may not have currency in the now.
Jordan Craig 12:38
Yeah, I think you kind of hit the nail on the head.
Gianofer Fields 12:43
Our work here is done!
Jordan Craig 12:47
Essentially, what we're in now is like a repository of the museum's inactive records. So there's sort of like a misconception that, like the archive is just like old stuff, you know, but it's really just inactive. And those aren't the same thing. I think maybe like the thing that's hard for me, it's like, I don't usually think of an archive as a noun. It's more like archive as a verb, like, what does it mean to archive something rather than like, what is the archive? Because I feel like people generally have some sense of like what an archive is, but don't necessarily know what it means to archive something. Like, remember that like chat we were having with Adam, about how there's stuff in the editorial, or like, there's random editorial stuff in a closet upstairs. It's like, yeah, that's the, quote, air quotes, archive materials. But really, it's just, they're stored there. Because in my head, they didn't go through an archival process, to make them discoverable. And to preserve them.
Gianofer Fields 13:49
Where do you begin? Do you just grab a box and start going, is there an architecture to it? Because I'm, well, I'm imagining the first step of that coming into a project new is discovery.
Jordan Craig 14:04
Yeah, so the first step, when I got here was kind of broad inventory. And I think maybe what separates like my work from the work of the people upstairs, like the museum people, it's, I'm used to working with like, information in aggregate, as opposed to like, object level stuff. So like, let's actually head over here. When I first got here, this room was basically empty. Andrea had iSchool students, kind of rotating, and creating a file level inventory, before I got here. So when I came, it was just the student, a box, and that table basically, that's kind of all we had in here. So people walk in here now and be like, Oh, it's a lot nicer. Like, oh, yeah, you think I'm working in a dungeon down here? No.
Gianofer Fields 15:03
Because it you know, it's funny that all these things have so much meaning and so much value. And the value is from the beginning to the end. But it just has these stages where it's kind of an unknown. Like, at some point, you know, I think about people actively working on things like we've looked a lot at. And ... what's that clanking?
Jordan Craig 15:23
Who knows?
Gianofer Fields 15:25
Wow, that's interesting. If ... listen, ...
Jordan Craig 15:28
it never goes away.
Gianofer Fields 15:29
If you people don't, if this is the last you hear from me, Jordan is your first suspect! Anyway. Because we're in the basement, like we're surrounded by cement, we're in something that's very secure. But it also, there's a daunting aspect to it. It's like it does feel like I'm in somewhere where I do have to have a special key and clearance and passage. But then this stuff is kind of in limbo until you turn your attention to it. Is that fair to say? Like, this is all important.
Jordan Craig 15:47
What do you mean limbo?
Gianofer Fields 15:53
It's kind of just sitting here. It's waiting. It's waiting to be, react. It's waiting. It's a noun, now it's a noun, now, and it's waiting to become your verb?
Jordan Craig 16:09
Yes. I don't think I can put it any better.
Gianofer Fields 16:13
Well, you started that. So hey.
16:16
Okay. So all right. We came out here with, how do we start with stuff?
Gianofer Fields 16:24
It's like opening up presents. Because you don't know what's in these boxes necessarily? Do you start digging through them?
Gianofer Fields 16:29
Okay, now, you know, I have a thing about metadata. Every time you say it, I think you want my Social Security number. So define metadata for me, so I can calm down because I can feel my head starting to tighten up.
Jordan Craig 16:29
Not necessarily, unless they're labeled well, which was actually a huge thing. And when I first started was looking at the labels of all the boxes. Sometimes they were completely unhelpful. Like it said, "Black file cabinet." Like, why would anyone care if it was in a black file cabinet? Like, actually, but that's a metadata thing. It's like, let's make metadata useful.
Jordan Craig 17:01
Right. So metadata is essentially providing context for information. So like what I have here on these boxes, okay, it's like these. This label says Chazen Museum of Art Exhibition records. This is Box Four of the exhibition records holds these this range of folders 138.1 to 172.2. It goes from 1982, August 25, to 1984, October 13, from the 138th exhibition to the 172nd. And it just gives like some brief titles like Edvard Munch in Costumes of Five Continents, but you should be able to get from the finding aid, even without a finding aid, you can have a good sense of what's in this box from the label, as opposed to, like file cabinet.
Gianofer Fields 17:54
So then, I'm imagining that, one thing we can think about is that when we see things in boxes, and we see things on the shelves, we know that they that this is the proper area for them are there things that have to be stored in a way where they have to be even, they have to be more protected, these boxes are protected. This is a dry room, it's definitely a secure room, you need a key to get anyone permission. But are there things that you have to consider? Maybe getting to first because it has to be stored in a way that protects them. And I can't think of what that could be because in my head, anything could be in this archive.
Jordan Craig 18:36
Actually, one of the first things I did when I got here was go through the film. Because after looking, kind of doing a cursory glance of all the stuff we have, from a preservation standpoint, that was the most in danger. And still is. So digitizing our pneumatic tapes from like the 1970s was priority number one, and VHS tapes also.
Jordan Craig 19:01
I don't know if I still have VHS parts in here, but I might no, I might have recycled them off.
Jordan Craig 19:15
Basically, there's some estimate of how long like all the VHS tapes have left, like in the world, it's like 10 or 20 years, if you don't get them off of VHS. They're gonna be gone.
Gianofer Fields 19:29
Wow, even the archive does tell a story of like, object preservation and like digital history. When VHS came out. We thought that was the end all be all. Then CDs and mini-discs and floppy disks came out that's like oh my God. I would imagine you have to have all those things because you have to be able to access all these these objects in the way that they were used during that time period so that I can imagine that you have like an array, ... now listen, that does not mean y'all get to bring your VHS tapes here to Jordan, and have her doing all that stuff. Let's it's really cool that we would want to see them.
Jordan Craig 20:08
We've actually done that.
Gianofer Fields 20:09
Wait, what?
Jordan Craig 20:10
Yeah, I had someone send me some VHS tapes from New York City. And I digitized them for her. Because they were related to this museum. Like that's sort of basically, one of the determining factors of how I decide what film stays and what film we just toss and get rid of. It's like, did it happen here at this museum? If it happened here, we want to know about it. You know?
Gianofer Fields 20:39
I think that because this is a museum that sits on the campus, and it's the campus-based museum, then I think we're going to be or I hope I'm going to be pleasantly surprised to see where this where these documents can take us.
Jordan Craig 20:56
Because when you say things like that my mind goes in a million places.
Gianofer Fields 21:00
Where does it go?
Jordan Craig 21:02
Right now I'm thinking about like the tour records behind us and like how the museum gave tours to different departments on campus, like, we have the med school tours in there. And like how docents would take med students around to like study anatomy and stuff. It's just like unexpected ways that this university is like interacting with this museum that I think is cool.
Gianofer Fields 21:26
Raichelle Johnson is a graduate student studying art history and library science. She is a UW archives processing assistant, and thankfully, project manager for this season.
Raichelle Johnson 21:40
An archive is my happy place? No, um, I think is like a living dictionary or thesaurus, maybe maybe even an encyclopedia, I think it could be all three of those things. Something that is constantly growing and gaining information with almost a limitless point of view, I guess.
Gianofer Fields 22:06
How is it your happy place? Talk to me about Raichelle and how, an archive, the something that we think of I think Lindsay said like dusty, fusty things we all have stored somewhere, how does an archive bring us because when I asked you that your face just lit up, and I'm trying to figure out where that spark came from?
Raichelle Johnson 22:25
Well, it's my happy place because I'm nosy. It's just such a wonderful place full of different sorts of information, and you never know what you're gonna find. So almost like a hidden door exercise. When I'm handed a collection to process sometimes I find something super cool that I've never seen before. Or sometimes I find papers that are literally covered in bird poop. So is always something new, despite it being maybe a repetitive process.
Gianofer Fields 23:00
And so then when you're finding these new things, what immediately starts to happen for you? Is it some sort of language, or an outline that starts to form in your head as you as you, as you find an object or something that excites you in that way?
Raichelle Johnson 23:18
It depends on what I find. So if I find something that pertains to my thesis research, or my art historical research, immediately I'm writing down where it is what it is that sort of thing. But if I find, say, like a recipe for a 20th-century biscuit, like I love to cook, so to me, immediately, I'm going to go make a copy of that recipe so that I can try it later. So I think it depends on what I find and what area of interest that is for me. But either way, it leads me down a rabbit hole.
Gianofer Fields 23:53
So then, how do you it's something that you love so much. You talked about how if it if it pertains to you personally, what happens if it's something that it's part of the university or part of your work life?
Raichelle Johnson 24:08
If it's something that's part of my work life, it depends on what it is, if it's something that is directly related to university history, but still is interesting to me, like I work a lot with processing some of the collections of the studio art teachers from years past. So in my work as an art historian, that is interesting, but it also benefits the university because I can then aid in developing a course about, for example, American art from the UW perspective.
Gianofer Fields 24:44
So then when you think about the archive, you're looking for things you like Jordan calls the archive, a verb, not a noun. So when you're looking for things in the archive, or you when you're when you find an object, you're looking at not only the historical value You indirect and recording of it, but also how it can be put sometimes, or maybe always into immediate use?
Raichelle Johnson 25:07
Yeah, actually, that is kind of the foundation of my research as an art historian. One of the things that I am passionate about is using archival resources to put them in the art history context. A lot of times when you talk to art historians, they all start from a painting. I like to say I start backwards. So I would start from a notebook or a sheet of paper left behind by somebody and trace that to the painting it corresponds to. But if it doesn't correspond to a painting that doesn't make it any less art history, because it is still the history of art.
Gianofer Fields 25:43
What sparked that search for you, what, what makes you want to know more about something?
Raichelle Johnson 25:49
Sometimes it's a photograph or a quote, or even if I just read that someone left a notebook or budget behind, like I said, I'm just nosy. It depends on the context, I guess, maybe of what I come across, like if I'm googling something, and then I find something interesting in the Google world. And I'm like, Okay, what archival resources have been left behind that relate to this? So I think a lot of that probably just comes from the library science background as well, always looking for the historical resources, who love what behind and who has something to say about it.
Gianofer Fields 26:26
When I started this project, and they said that I could bring a student on, I immediately thought of you, because of the conversations that we've had in the office. And I always in this, this is gonna sound horrible. And I don't mean it to sound horrible. But I always say, Raichelle would be awesome for this, because she has a murder brain. But you watching you get excited. And I think it was an artist and a model. Watching you get excited about something that happened hundreds of years ago. It's just delightful. It was such a pleasant way to live vicariously because I was just starting this. I hadn't worked in this building for two seconds, it seemed and you are popping up and talking about murder. So where did like I know you said you're nosy. And the reason why I do this is because I've always been called a busybody and a tattletale. That's kind of why this is perfect for me. But talk to me about that, how do you with with the excitement and the joy that it brings you, how do you separate your excitement and joy? How do you how do you not influence the story, by your own, by your what you perceive, or what you believe to be, or what you hope this information leads you to?
Raichelle Johnson 27:44
It's actually a really good question. And it relates to the story that about murder? Because is largely, it's a solved case. But there are so many questions. And so I love to answer questions. And I've not found anything that really answers all of my questions. But in doing this exercise of research, I have learned to kind of separate myself. So the facts are the facts. And what I think happened 100 years later, is only relevant if I'm going to use new factual information to then create a fictional story. So like if I was to, and I probably will maybe one day, use my research to create a fictional series, then that is where I can come in. In terms of my actual like thesis project and stuff, it is interesting to figure out how to leave yourself out of that. But I find that my manifestation of myself in that research is the quantity of items that I have to wade through in order to produce something, means like you said, I get so excited, I'm just searching and searching and searching. And I find so many articles and article from this newspaper article from that newspaper, they say the same thing, but they're different. So I'm just like a collector of all of this stuff, that now I have to go through and pick out the narrative that I want for my thesis or whatever it is that I'm doing.
Gianofer Fields 29:16
So then when do you stop looking?
Raichelle Johnson 29:18
I personally don't. Because of the nature of what I study, and the lack of resources, I am actively looking for these resources. I want to know where they are so that way I can use them and make them known to others. I mean, working at an archive, I understand the processing speed is only as fast as the person processing and if you only have one person processing, you're gonna have a huge backlog of really interesting stuff that nobody will get to, who's so I don't ever, which is why I also carry around flash drives, like I'm always searching, I have flash drives in my backpack. I've got a cloud drive on this device, so I'm just saving stuff everywhere.
Gianofer Fields 30:04
And you're using the archival method of saving stuff everywhere so that you can access it and then perhaps share that with others in the future.
Raichelle Johnson 30:11
Yeah, one thing that I've found through all of my research is that there are sources available. Like I think it's in Colorado, they have this awesome database of ancient newspapers that I never knew about until I was trying to find a person from the 20th century. So she actually transplanted from New York to Colorado is in the Colorado newspapers. So stuff like that is important to me to save and to save them in a way that I know. Okay, this is from Colorado. So I can go back to that source, but also be a source for anybody else who is just curious about anything that happened in Colorado in 1925.
Gianofer Fields 30:52
I'm slowly not slowly realizing I knew what I was doing from the outset. But this podcast is, in a sense, an archive. So then, are there tips you can give me on what I should be looking for? Or ways that I should be approaching interviews and information that makes this even easier to archive? Or is that not on me? Is it on me to just do the work that I do? And then turn it over to Jordan, are you and let you deal with it?
Raichelle Johnson 31:17
Well, I do think that this is a form of archive. I don't know if you should be archiving anything ...
Gianofer Fields 31:27
I think the fact that I think that anything I type into Google is gonna explode the system is a clear sign that I should not be archiving.
Raichelle Johnson 31:34
No, I think that this is interesting, because one of the things that is happening in a lot of archives are oral histories. This is not necessarily an oral history. But it's a very similar kind of vein of thinking, because it is very oral, and it's very historical, but it's coming from almost a reflective point of view where we are looking back on the history of the Chazen and presenting it to others to almost create this like circular moment here. And of course, we'll probably have some voices from that time period in the Chazen as well. If we can find them if they're not it. But it I think it can be archived, but in this digital age, the podcast itself is archived. So in Spotify in this, and that, I mean, there are so many product podcasts that have died, but you can still find them, then maybe the only things that would probably be archived in terms of like, actually, filing shelving boxing would probably just be maybe correspondence or other like material, like physical materials that are leftover from this because I can't imagine anybody re recording these podcasts and put them in a box because digital archiving is a beast that nobody wants to tackle.
Gianofer Fields 32:59
How are you building bridges with this information? How how do you then turn this noun into a verb when you're working with it, like walk me through sort of that process? Because we have a conversation of what the archive is, and how things enter an archive, we have an example of that, but I don't have a bridge from taking it from the archive into putting into practice.
Raichelle Johnson 33:23
Okay, um, well, there are two things I can think of off the top of my head. And one is sort of an exhibition, which I guess this can also be kind of classed as an exhibition as well. But it's a showcase, really, this is what's in the archive, I'm showing it to you. I've done like photo displays and stuff like that from archival materials that, you know, nobody's really thinking about. So you just make a reproduction of the photo because you don't want to use original photo preservation and all that and display them show them. I did one once during homecoming. So it was like old football rivalry stuff, cool photos, like ancient football ticket, that sort of thing. And another one is, which is something that I think we're probably going to do with this, is to take what we find in the archive and do it, like here's this 20th century recipe for banana fruit fly salad, I don't know.
Gianofer Fields 34:26
Does not sound delicious, but hey.
Raichelle Johnson 34:28
I mean, in the 20th century a lot of those sounds kind of sketchy, but to take that and do it and record it and talk about it. So it's another way of both experiencing what's in the archive but also sharing it with others. Nobody's going to eat that. But it's, it's an experiential thing I think is really interesting to take something that is leftover on paper or on tape, whatever, and make it physical, make it attainable, without having to learn what a finding aid is and how to use one.
Gianofer Fields 35:04
So there is some there is some delight, there is some fun. I think that from somebody who comes from a journalist background, and I have, I quickly learned that I am in my own way, an archivist, which is kind of crazy. But anyway, it's that I'm finding the delight in learning about it. But then understanding it that I can approach it from my own particular point of view, there is no one way other than finding the information, but I can use any number of terms to find the information. Once I found the information, I'm not necessarily bound by any particular way of presenting it, it can be through my own personal lens and experiences.
Raichelle Johnson 35:46
Yeah, definitely. I think that's one of the interesting things about an archive. There's a lot of discourse now about, you know, who owns the archive, or who put what into the archive. But to me at its heart, an archive is like, a thesaurus, is an encyclopedia, a dictionary, like I said earlier, I'm giving you this item for you to then learn or find whatever word you need and take that and do whatever it is that you need to do with it. But also, it's a way to connect to history in such a tangible manner. I mean, when you find I'm going back to these recipes, because my mind was so blown when I found them when you find recipes from 1920-something Ball canning book, and I've always wanted to try canning So I'm sitting there like marking page numbers, so I can go and copy the recipes out of this book for different fruit preservatives that I'm going to try when I finally have space to can things. So it's just it's a historical moment in your present life.
Gianofer Fields 37:02
Meet me at the Chazen is a production of the Chazen Museum of Art on the campus of UW–Madison and Madison, Wisconsin. Lindsay Grinstead is the chief of staff and omnipotent being. Jordan Craig is a digital asset coordinator, multimedia archivist, and self-proclaimed nerd. Raichelle Johnson is a graduate student studying art history and library science, a UW archives processing assistant, which makes sense because she's nosy and she's also the project manager for this season. For more information about the museum its collections and exhibitions, visit chazen.wisc.edu. I'm your host, busybody and tattletale Gianofer Fields, thanks for listening.