PHOTOGRAPHS, SLIDES, AND NEGATIVES,, circa 1910-2008
Dates
- circa 1910-2008
Scope and Content Note
The Miriam Schapiro Papers spans from circa 1893 to 2019 with the bulk of material spanning from 1940 to 2008. The collection is 110 cubic feet in size and is composed of 91 records center cartons, 14 newspaper boxes, 6 high density photograph boxes, 5 map drawers, and 4 manuscript boxes. The Miriam Schapiro Papers documents the artistic career and personal life of the feminist artist Miriam Schapiro (1923-2015). The collection is arranged into 17 series. Professional and personal materials often overlap lack of division between professional and personal papers. Schapiro was often friends with artists, curators. and their work together often blended into a mixture of personal and professional.
The collection is largely paper based, but also includes: slides, photographs, negatives, ephemeral objects, audio magnetic tape, audio cassettes, floppy disks, digital files (jpgs, pdfs), artwork in various media, VHS tapes, Beta tapes, reel to reel films, and scrapbooks. Digital files from floppy disks and Schapiro's Emac were were composed largely of 1990s versions of Word, excel, jpgs, tiffs, psd, and one mp4 file. Digital files have been uploaded to the R drive, a secure drive at Special Collections and University Archives.
Significant topics include, but are not limited to: feminism, the women's art movement, second wave feminism, abstract expressionism, the Cedar Bar, the Feminist Art Program, femmage, quilts, computer art, historical women artists, and women's craft.
The Appendix contains material collected by Rutgers archivists from 2015-2019. The Appendix will continue to be developed. It serves as a continuation of the Work Documents Series. Material types include: clippings, reviews, exhibition catalogs, and ephemera.
Oversized and digital files are listed at the end of series for clarity.
Language of Materials
English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish
Physical Description
(16.5 cubic feet of photographs and 1.3 GB, 4 records center cartons, 7 high density photo boxes, 2 oversized newspaper boxes and 303 digital files; 7.5 cubic feet of 35 mm slides, 5.5 record center cartons and 2 high density slide boxes; and 3 cubic feet of negatives, 3 records center cartons)
Arrangement
Arrangement: The series is divided naturally into three subseries: Photographs, Slides, and Negatives. Photographs are arranged by subject, and within subject chronologically. Slides are arranged by subject matter, after having been removed from metal and plastic slide drawers. Original order was largely kept with few exceptions. Negatives are also arranged by subject.
General
Appraisal and Discard Information: Original Box 92 which contained slides had an overwhelming musty smell and almost all of the slides were pink. Because the slides were works of art by masters, the images could easily be found in any art history text book. Examples of artists include: van Gogh, Durer, Picasso, Gorky, Rembrandt, Braque, etc. The slides in box 92 were discarded.
Part of the New Brunswick Special Collections Repository