Where it All Came From: SCMA’s Object Source Records
Z Stevens, 25J, is an English Major and a Museum Concentrator. They are the student Collections Assistant.
A museum’s collection comes with an archive of information surrounding it. And for just over one whole calendar year, I, Z Stevens, have had the financial and source information of the entire SCMA collection at my mercy!
That might be a slight exaggeration.
I have actually spent the last year (almost three semesters and a summer) attempting to organize the hundreds of files of sensitive archival institutional information around acquisitions. These are called the source files, but to me, they are the Blue Files. It has been a massive project, but it isn’t exactly glamorous. Call it clean up, call it information management, call it the world’s most low-stakes detective work. Whatever it is, I’ve loved doing it, and I think that people interested in the behind-the-scenes at SCMA might find some of what I’ve learned valuable too.
The Source File Cabinets. Photo by Z Stevens
I go through the Blue Files alphabetically, checking their contents against the information in our database. Sometimes the information in our database is incomplete or incorrect. The most important thing is for us to be able to connect the database record to the physical file with the object’s written records and history. Maybe a letter from a donor explaining where they themselves got the work. On a rare day, there’s nothing for me to fix or update, but usually, there’s something that needs changing.
Rarer still is when I come across a file with something so interesting in it I have to write it down so that I don’t forget.
One such story is in an art dealer’s file. It includes the paperwork related to a painting that was originally bought to be hung elsewhere on campus. The painting, which is still in the collection, is Ben Nicholson’s Still Life (West Penwith), 1949. It lived in the student residence Lamont House for several years, and when it came time to clean the painting in 1958, it was removed by museum staff.
Nicholson’s Still Life (West, Penwith). Courtesy of the Smith College Museum of Art. SC 1955.15
The museum staff made a mistake when they removed the painting. They didn’t inform the residents of Lamont House where the painting was going or why they were taking it. The harmless return of a painting to the museum turned into a massive series of correspondence from Lamont’s house mother, house president, and other residents chastising the museum and calling for the return of the painting. Eventually, even the then-president of the college got involved on the side of the students.
The director of SCMA at the time, Mr. Parks, was so scandalized by the whole affair that while the Nicholson was never returned to Lamont, the museum’s approach to attempting to return works in the collection to the museum was completely changed. It might also have had something to do with the college president’s letters telling him exactly what he did wrong.
This is just one of the more interesting, revealing, funny, and sometimes just weird stories I have found in the Blue Files. The Blue Files remind us that the work here at the museum is connected to a much larger campus community. They tell us about who worked here before us. Every time I see a familiar name it’s like saying hello.
When I graduate at the end of the year, my part in this project will end. I will have organized the files in at least six cabinet drawers, one of which decided to lock me out while I was writing this – I would estimate over two thousand individual folders. That’s hundreds of people’s names and hundreds more pieces of art that I got to interact with. I have organized files with information dating back to the early 1900s to objects just entering the collection. I’m very proud of the low stakes mysteries in the Blue Files that have been solved during this project, from locating source information to revealing misattributions and data errors.