Artist Studio Archives: Intro to Managing Your Archive

This one-hour workshop introduces basic concepts and tools for managing your studio archives–the stuff you keep that documents your creative practice and legacy. Having basic skills for organizing your studio archives will make you more productive in the studio. (This is some of the “work” in art-work that is usually not discussed in art courses.) We’ll address why organizing your archives is important to any artist’s studio practice and give practical advice on artwork inventories, organizing documentation around exhibitions and other activities, what the heck to do with all that email, and establishing SMART goals for your studio archives. Participants will receive a copy of the workbook Artist Studio Archives: Managing Personal Collections and Creative Legacies (2022 edition).

This session is part of a week-long artist studio archives workshop series covering basic concepts and tools for managing your studio archives–the stuff you keep that documents your creative practice and legacy. We invite you to join in one or all the workshops in the series.

Instructor Heather Gendron is a visual artist and is the director of Yale’s Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library. She is co-author of the workbook Artist Studio Archives: Managing Personal Collections and Creative Legacies, which was funded with grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation and Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA).