Skyla S. Hearn: Week 10 at the Woodson/Harsh

Reference, reference and more reference. Sometimes one needs to shake the ennui before it settles in. I took an extended break  aka a few hours during the week from the Wyatt Photograph collection to complete some archival reference. The first patron, a Ph.D. student at University College London, working on the history of community art and collective practices in the USA was really interested in the history of the South Side Community Art Center. During her trip to the USA, she conducted research at the St. Louis People's Art Center, the South Side Community Art Center and the Harsh Research Center. I advised her to include the Fern Gayden, William McBride and Frances Minor Papers to aid with research on Federal Art and Theater Projects.



"Full Moon, Haitian Rhythm"

The next request came from an art gallery owner who was researching murals painted by William Edouard Scott in Chicago during the 1930s.  From her online research she discovered that the Woodson Regional Library has Scott archives: http://www.chipublib.org/cplbooksmovies/cplarchive/archivalcoll/scott.php.  She requested that I send her a scanned copy of a letter dated March 3, 1933 from Henry K. Kraft to William Edouard Scott.  I completed the request and filed the paper work. Pictured to the left is a replication of Scott's oil on canvas "Full Moon, Haitian Rhythm". Original William Edouard Scott paintings can also be found in the permanent collection at the South Side Community Art Center.

 

"Black Maverick" aka T.R.M. Howard

I've never really considered myself to have the "hook up". A hook up for those of you who are unaware is a connection made between two or more people or a discount. In this case, the hook-up I provide as an archivist is to provide patrons with a link to information. In some cases patrons come to the archives prepared with a list of archival collections they want to view and in other cases some patrons arrive with an empty piece of paper = blank Word document and the expectation that you, the archivist, will aid in their process to get their research completed. This last patron fit the first description. He is researching the Emmett Till case in preparation to write a book. He was prepared with a list of archival collections, including the T.R.M. Howard,  Timuel D. Black, Robert S. Abbott-John H. Sengstacke, Barbara E. Allen, and Wyatt Papers. I later provided him with additional information that could be found in the Lucy Smith-Collier papers, advised him to conduct an interview with Bennett Jones Johnson, Vice President of Third World Press and to visit the Walter Ruether Library in Detroit, Michigan.

In this line of work, the reward is two-fold. There's the business of helping the patron but there's also the benefit of gaining useful information to add to your own mental archive.