British Museum (22nd February 10:30-11:30am) and Tate Archives (23rd February 10am-11:15am)
Field Notes
The British Museum, though being the most institutional of all the places we visited, had the smallest archive space, which was not even it, own department, but joined up with the legal section of the Museum, housed in the basement. The location and architecture of the archive was not unlike the Tate Britain, itself housed below water, level (hence the large fortress like doors to protect it. And while the British Museum has its Archive room, and a public Reading Room, the Tate’s archive spaces are "staged" with some rooms being open to the public, and the others restricted (i.e the main archival library is staff only - the material is logged online and members, of the public may request what they want to see, and this will be brought to them in the public reading room).
Design-wise, the Tate’s was a much more sophisticated storing system, using modular shelving that enables the shelves to act as containers(same system used in the National Archives). Tate operates their own database systems (CALM used – said to be the most common Archiving system in the UK), while the British Museum was using Edexcel, and only now has a new cataloguing system been approved (!)
In terms of staffing, the British Museum had one archivist and one intern (but were not able to offer paid internship as a result of funding cuts), while the Tate had 25 staff members and were looking to introduce paid internships.
In terms of accessibility, the British Museum had one space – the Central Archives Rooms, which is open to the public and gets on average about five requests per week. The archive contains historical material from the Museum’s inception in the 17th Century to the late 19th/early 20th Century. As the archivist said, it is the content rather than the from that is on interest, though the from of the archive material was incredibly ornate – bounds books – very beautiful objects. The archivist\s relationship to the material was one of familiarity. She showed us application forms to enter the Reading Room – one reference letter for Bram Stoker, telling us how Marx and Virginia Woolf all had to fill out applications. Today the British Museum Reading Rooms is of course open to the public. In an interesting parallel, the Tate Britain requires registration to enter their Reading Room (this is more a security measure if anything).
In both cases, the documentation archive was views as separate to the ‘works’ archive – a distinction between art object and documentation – which we found very interesting. In relation to visibility, the archives felt almost hidden, less visible, and consciously so, in terms of being positions within the architecture underground, and very much outside of the Museum proper. The same was reflected in the acknowledgement of how the documentation archives were funded different to main collections (something John Latham Foundation and Archive team noted when we visited the Flat Time space). The Tate Archive started in the 1970’s, which somehow corresponds to the identification of the 60;s and 70’s by the British Museum archivist as a point in which attitudes to archiving changed – both archivists we spoke to at British Museum and Tate had studied history and then undertaken an MA in archiving, though the courses were more practical then theory based in that emphasis was placed on the science of archiving – ie. Methodology, environments etc…with as it seems, little mention of more abstracted, theoretical references ie’ Derrida et al. Tate archivist did say Glasgow University had a more theory-based course, and UCL was the main course for Archiving in the UK.
When it comes to personal correspondence etc…the British Museum’s Central Archives are public as the material is historical, while the Tate operates in three levels:
Current: Active material produced/used NOW
Semi-Current: Records of things basically finished, ie. Past exhibitions, but must still be needed for reference
Historic: no longer used - records entered officially into the archive.
Within Current and Semi-Current, issues of Freedom of Information and the Data Protection Act apply, considering most material in the category "historic" are from those already deceased. The spectrum between Freedom of Information and Data Protection we all found interesting, as it refects on the dialectics of law within the archive, the division of public/private, visible/invisible, information - this make the trip to the King's College library an important one to organize as archives are ruled/regulated by laws (as Tate notes “ruled by Parliament”)
Notions of the National: both British Museum and Tate’s archives are consciously British – interesting when thinking of the archive as a national history and how to navigate the politics associated with that.
KEY THEMES: Law, Politics, National Identity, Content vs. Form, Information Production, Exchange, Containment
Private/Public, Data Information vs. Freedom of Information, accessibility, separation: documentation archive kept separate from artworks and objects “archive” as history, archive as technical and practical as opposed to theoretical.
Design-wise, the Tate’s was a much more sophisticated storing system, using modular shelving that enables the shelves to act as containers(same system used in the National Archives). Tate operates their own database systems (CALM used – said to be the most common Archiving system in the UK), while the British Museum was using Edexcel, and only now has a new cataloguing system been approved (!)
In terms of staffing, the British Museum had one archivist and one intern (but were not able to offer paid internship as a result of funding cuts), while the Tate had 25 staff members and were looking to introduce paid internships.
In terms of accessibility, the British Museum had one space – the Central Archives Rooms, which is open to the public and gets on average about five requests per week. The archive contains historical material from the Museum’s inception in the 17th Century to the late 19th/early 20th Century. As the archivist said, it is the content rather than the from that is on interest, though the from of the archive material was incredibly ornate – bounds books – very beautiful objects. The archivist\s relationship to the material was one of familiarity. She showed us application forms to enter the Reading Room – one reference letter for Bram Stoker, telling us how Marx and Virginia Woolf all had to fill out applications. Today the British Museum Reading Rooms is of course open to the public. In an interesting parallel, the Tate Britain requires registration to enter their Reading Room (this is more a security measure if anything).
In both cases, the documentation archive was views as separate to the ‘works’ archive – a distinction between art object and documentation – which we found very interesting. In relation to visibility, the archives felt almost hidden, less visible, and consciously so, in terms of being positions within the architecture underground, and very much outside of the Museum proper. The same was reflected in the acknowledgement of how the documentation archives were funded different to main collections (something John Latham Foundation and Archive team noted when we visited the Flat Time space). The Tate Archive started in the 1970’s, which somehow corresponds to the identification of the 60;s and 70’s by the British Museum archivist as a point in which attitudes to archiving changed – both archivists we spoke to at British Museum and Tate had studied history and then undertaken an MA in archiving, though the courses were more practical then theory based in that emphasis was placed on the science of archiving – ie. Methodology, environments etc…with as it seems, little mention of more abstracted, theoretical references ie’ Derrida et al. Tate archivist did say Glasgow University had a more theory-based course, and UCL was the main course for Archiving in the UK.
When it comes to personal correspondence etc…the British Museum’s Central Archives are public as the material is historical, while the Tate operates in three levels:
Current: Active material produced/used NOW
Semi-Current: Records of things basically finished, ie. Past exhibitions, but must still be needed for reference
Historic: no longer used - records entered officially into the archive.
Within Current and Semi-Current, issues of Freedom of Information and the Data Protection Act apply, considering most material in the category "historic" are from those already deceased. The spectrum between Freedom of Information and Data Protection we all found interesting, as it refects on the dialectics of law within the archive, the division of public/private, visible/invisible, information - this make the trip to the King's College library an important one to organize as archives are ruled/regulated by laws (as Tate notes “ruled by Parliament”)
Notions of the National: both British Museum and Tate’s archives are consciously British – interesting when thinking of the archive as a national history and how to navigate the politics associated with that.
KEY THEMES: Law, Politics, National Identity, Content vs. Form, Information Production, Exchange, Containment
Private/Public, Data Information vs. Freedom of Information, accessibility, separation: documentation archive kept separate from artworks and objects “archive” as history, archive as technical and practical as opposed to theoretical.
Public/Private
Extract from: http://foucaultacrossthedisciplines.blogspot.com/2007/02/governmentality-lecture.html