By the Archives
Interview by
Josh T. Franco
Project Overview
To document the cascade of public health, social, and financial crises set in motion by COVID-19, the Archives of American Art created an oral history series that recorded responses to the global pandemic across the American art world. Conducted virtually, the Pandemic Oral History Project features eighty-five short-form interviews with a diverse group of artists, teachers, curators, and administrators. Averaging twenty-five minutes long, each interview provides a firsthand account of and urgent insights into the narrator’s triumphs and tragedies in the summer of 2020. With more than thirty hours of recorded video and audio, the series bears witness to an unprecedented era as it unfolded in real time.
Interviewers
- Nyssa Chow, lecturer and Princeton Arts Fellow, Lewis Center for the Arts and codirector, NYC COVID-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Archive, Columbia University/INCITE
- Fernanda Espinosa, oral historian and cultural organizer
- Lara M. Evans, associate professor of art history, Institute of American Indian Arts
- Melissa Ho, curator of twentieth-century art, Smithsonian American Art MuseumFrom the Archives curatorial staff:
- Josh T. Franco, national collector
- Ben Gillespie, Arlene and Robert Kogod Secretarial Scholar for Oral History
- Jacob Proctor, Gilbert and Ann Kinney New York Collector
- Matthew Simms, Gerald and Bente Buck West Coast Collector
Participants
For the selection of interviewees, we sought to capture diverse voices and multigenerational perspectives. The team continued to assess the breadth of narrators throughout the project, adjusting outreach as needed. When so many feel isolated and when traditional art spaces are disrupted and face existential risks, we are grateful to have reconnected with narrators already present in the Archives through personal papers, institutional records, and oral histories, while integrating many new voices into the collections.
View the full list of participants
How to Watch
The videos will be released in batches on our YouTube Channel(link is external), iTunes(link is external). Together they form a chorus of resilience and despair, creation and loss. We hope the testimonies of artistic leaders and luminaries convey the interconnectedness and vibrancy of the art world in 2020.
Acknowledgments
Thirty-five interviews were supported with federal funding from the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center.
For further information about this project, contact:
Ben Gillespie, Arlene and Robert Kogod Secretarial Scholar for Oral History, Archives of American Art, GillespieB@si.edu
Participants Include:
- Lita Albuquerque(link is external)
- Cory Arcangel(link is external)
- LaTanya Autry(link is external)
- Billy Al Bengston
- Jessie Benton(link is external)
- Ed Bereal(link is external)
- Judith Bernstein(link is external)
- The Bobs(link is external)
- Mark Bradford(link is external)
- Sonel Breslav(link is external)
- Nao Bustamante(link is external)
- Gabo Camnitzer(link is external)
- Juan Capistran(link is external)
- Terry Carbone(link is external)
- Mary Ceruti
- Lenore Chinn(link is external)
- Allana Clarke(link is external)
- John Corbett(link is external)
- Lauren Cornell (not publicly available)
- Pepe Coronado(link is external)
- Adriana Corral(link is external)
- Suzy Delvalle
- DEMI(link is external)
- Devon Dikeou(link is external)
- Fred Eversley(link is external)
- RYAN! Feddersen(link is external)
- Morgan Fisher(link is external)
- Chitra Ganesh(link is external)
- Guillermo Gómez-Peña(link is external)
- Ken Gonzales-Day
- Rita Gonzalez(link is external)
- Deana Haggag(link is external)
- Edgar HeapofBirds(link is external)
- Cadex Herrera(link is external)
- Sheila Hicks(link is external)
- Nancy Hom(link is external)
- Margaret Honda(link is external)
- Alfredo Jaar(link is external)
- Paul Ramirez Jonas(link is external)
- Kim Jones(link is external)
- Linda Lomahaftewa(link is external)
- Erica Lord(link is external)
- Cannupa Hanska Luger(link is external)
- Jeffrey Meris
- Omar Mismar(link is external)
- Alessandra Moctezuma(link is external)
- Nabil Mousa(link is external)
- Carrie Moyer
- Caitlin Murray(link is external)
- Rubén Ortiz-Torres
- Trevor Paglen(link is external)
- Sheila Pepe(link is external)
- Lillian Pitt(link is external)
- Gala Porras-Kim(link is external)
- Astrid Preston(link is external)
- Esteban Ramón Pérez(link is external)
- Wendy Red Star(link is external)
- Al Rendon(link is external)
- Dario Robleto
- Arturo Rodriguez(link is external)
- Moses Ros(link is external)
- Juan Sanchez
- Cinthya Santos Briones(link is external)
- Matt Saunders(link is external)
- Ilana Savdie(link is external)
- Alisa Sikelianos Carter(link is external)
- Julia Santos Solomon(link is external)
- Jesse Treviño(link is external)
- Kay Turner
- Consuelo Jimenez Underwood(link is external)
- Vincent Valdez(link is external)
- Tam Van Tran(link is external)
- David Velasco(link is external)
- Jose Villalobos(link is external)
- Kay Walkingstick(link is external)
- Tyrone and Stefan Weedon and Bauschmid(link is external)
- James Welling(link is external)
- Krzysztof Wodiczko(link is external)
- Tom Wudl
- Layqa Nuna Yawar
- Bruce Yonemoto(link is external)
- Elyn Zimmerman