Reports of the Museums and Research Institutes 



15 



son, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Romare Bearden, Chester Hig- 

 gins Jr., and David C. Driskell. 



"Locating the Spirit" inspired and served as rhe backdrop 

 for the ioth annual James A. Porter Colloquium on African 

 American Art and Spirituality. The museum collaborated 

 with the Howard University Department of Art to bring 700 

 participants to a three-day symposium featuring lecture- 

 demonstrations by some of the nation's major artists and art 

 scholars. Among the presenters were 20 artists whose work 

 was exhibited in "Locating the Spirit." Named for James A. 

 Porter (1905—70), a former chair of the Howard art depart- 

 ment who produced the nation's first in-depth scholarship in 

 African American art history, the Porter Colloquium is now 

 an annual feature of the museum's educational programming. 



The museum also made a deeper and more intense exami- 

 nation of the art and cultural issues of Africa. In its first 

 collaboration with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Pet- 

 forming Arts, the museum organized an exhibition distilling 

 more than a century's worth of photographs taken by attists 

 born and based in Africa. "Revue Noire: Africa by Africans" 

 explored diverse esthetics and techniques from a wide range 

 of places and photographers, created a fresh view of the 

 African family, and presented studio portraiture rarely seen 

 in the United States. 



In a first-time collaboration with the National Museum of 

 African Art, the Anacostia Museum and Center helped pres- 

 ent "Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African 

 American Identity." For its part of the two-sited exhibition, 

 the museum examined how Africa's most popular textile art 

 has become a vital part of contemporary life in America, 

 used in worship services, formal ceremonies, and home decor. 



February's Black History Month observances got an un- 

 usual launch as a crowd of about 16,000 turned out for the 

 debut of the Capital Children's Carnival. With a challenging 

 Black History Month Quiz as the centerpiece — featuring the 

 D.C. delegate to the House of Representatives Eleanor 

 Holmes Norton as quiz master — the day's events included 

 hands-on arts and crafts, storytelling, folk dancing from 

 Africa, the Caribbean, and South America, and a carnival pa- 

 rade with patticipants wearing the masks and costumes they 

 made that day. 



Archives of American Art 



Richard I . Wattenmaker, Director 



The Archives of American Art (AAA) is the world's largest 

 repository of primary source documentation about the his- 

 tory of visual arts and culture in America. For more than 45 

 years, the Archives has collected, preserved, and made avail- 

 able for study such diverse materials as letters and diaries of 

 artists and crafts people; manuscripts of critics and scholars; 

 records of art museums, galleries, and schools; photographs; 

 works of art on paper; and recorded oral and video inter- 

 views. More than 14 million documents comprise an 

 indispensable resource for researchers, who, in addition to 



consulting otiginal papers at the Washington, D.C. head- 

 quarters, may access selected holdings on microfilm 

 worldwide through interlibrary loan or at Archives centers 

 in Washington, New York, and San Marino, California, and 

 affiliated research facilities in Boston and San Francisco. The 

 Archives also provides Internet access to its resources and 

 services through its Web site and on-line catalog. 



The Archives of American Art collects, preserves, and 

 makes available for study the records, original papers, photo- 

 graphs, diaries, and oral history interviews of artists, crafts 

 persons, collectors, dealers, critics, museums, and other arts 

 institutions. In FY 1999, AAA continued to meet its goal of 

 increasing accessibility to the collections through a variety of 

 means, including the processing of papers, the publication of 

 finding aids, the display of original documents in exhibi- 

 tions, Web site enhancement, and other forms of outreach. 



Because of the ongoing renovation of the Patent Office 

 Building, AAA relocated its Washington offices to The 

 Aerospace Center, one block from the National Mall. Large, 

 climate-controlled processing rooms facilitate the processing 

 of archival documents. The consolidation of Interlibrary 

 Loan with the rest of Reference Services has enhanced serv- 

 ices to researchers worldwide. 



Research 



In FY 1999, AAA continued to employ technology to in- 

 crease access for its Internet users. Among the enhancements 

 was "A Preliminary Guide to Resources on Asian American 

 Artists at the Archives of American Art." The guide, pre- 

 sented in conjunction with Asian Pacific American Heritage 

 Month, provides documents and photographs on-line. A 

 published guide comparable to those already published by 

 the Archives for the papers of African American and Latino 

 artists is in preparation. 



The Archives is currently engaged in a pilot project em- 

 ploying encoded archival description (EAD) to encode 50 of 

 its finding aids. EAD is a digital format that will make the 

 finding aids accessible to researchers worldwide on the Web. 

 A researcher can search encoded finding aids individually or 

 in combination with the growing number of similarly en- 

 coded finding aids contributed by othet archival repositories 

 throughout the wotld. Once encoded in EAD, the finding 

 aids will be contributed to the Research Libraries Group 

 (RLG) Archival Resources, providing even greater accessibil- 

 ity to the Archives' rich holdings. 



Collections Acquisitions 



In FY 1999, the Archives made significant additions to its 

 holdings of over 14 million documents. Among these was 

 the final installment of the papers of Marcel Breuer 

 (1902- 1 981), comprising financial records and personal 

 and professional correspondence with his colleagues from 

 the Bauhaus, including Walter Gropius, Herbert Bayer, 

 and Josef Albers. AAA also acquired the complete records 

 of the Byron Gallery, 1960-197 1, which specialized in Sur- 

 realist masters (Ernst, Matta, Magritte) and younget Pop, 



