The collection includes 1,469 color slides (35mm) which were taken in Nigeria from circa 1964-1994, and focus on ancestral altars; artists; art objects in museums, including bronze plaques and carved ivory tusks; ceremonies and festivals, including the Igue and Ewere Festivals, and the Emobo, Otue, Olokun, title-taking, and Blackmun's initation ceremonies; and people, including Oba Erediauwa and chiefs Eribo, Ero, Esogban, Ezomo, Ohanmu and Osaigeide; and street and landscape scenes in Benin City, Ife, Lagos, Ishiago, and Mbarri, Owerri, Owo, among other locations in Nigeria.
Scope and Contents:
The collection includes 1,469 color slides (35mm) which were taken in circa 1969 to 1994, and focus on African art objects, prominent people, especially chiefs, festivals and ceremonies, and landscape and street scenes in Nigeria, including Benin City, Ife, Ishiago, Jeronimos, Lagos, Mbari, Oshagbe, Owerri, Owo, Oyo, and Udu.
Many of the images are of art objects in museums, particularly in the Jos Museum, the Owo Museum, the Benin Museum, the Lagos Museum, the Ife Palace Museum, and the University of Ife Museum. The objects include altar stands, armlets, bells, bowls, boxes, bracelets, figures, Oko (flutes), ivory gongs, Ikengobos, masks, motif drawings, pendants, plaques, regalia, salt cellars, staffs, stools, and carved ivory tusks.
People depicted include the Oba Erediauwa, and the chiefs Eribo, Ero, Esogban, Ezomo, Ohanmu and Osaigeide. The collection also documents ceremonies and festivals, including the Igue and Ewere Festivals, and the Emobo, Otue, and Olokun ceremonies as well as Ineh Isienmwenro's title-taking, and Blackmun's initation.
Arrangement:
Arranged into 4 series:
Series 1: Museum Objects (747 slides), 1979-1994
Series 2: Ceremonies (227 slides), circa 1969-1994
Series 3: People (354 slides), circa 1969-1994
Series 4: Landscape and Street Scenes (141 slides), circa 1969-1994
Biographical / Historical:
African art historian Barbara Winston Blackmun (1928-) is a specialist in Nigerian antiquities, particularly Nok terracottas, the bronzes of Ile Ife, and the bronzes and ivories of the Kingdom of Benin in Nigeria. She earned her BFA at UCLA (1949), MA at Arizona State University (1971), and Doctor of Philosophy in Art History at UCLA (1984).
Over her career, Blackmun's research has included fieldwork in Malawi (1964-1969) and research of Ife antiquities with Frank Willett (1978-79) and various collections on Benin antiquities in the U.K., U.S., Europe, and Africa (1980-present). Recipient of a Fulbright (1981-1982) and a National Endowment for the Humanities grant (1994), she conducted field work at the Oba's court in Benin City, Nigeria. Additionally, she has published numerous exhibition catalogs and articles in journals such as African Arts.
Blackmun taught art history at the Malawi Polytechnic College, Blantyre, (1965—1969), San Diego Mesa College (at which she is Professor Emeritus) (1971—2010), University of California, San Diego (1987, 2008, 2004), and UCLA (1987, 2000), among other places. She also curated and acted as a curatorial consultant of African art collections at numerous institutions, including Mesa College, the San Diego Museum of Art (2010), Chicago Field Museum (1990—1993), Chicago Art Institute (1994, 2006—2008), Detroit Institute of Art (2002—2010), Museum fuer Voelkerkunde, Vienna (2003—2008), and the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin (2003—2008).
Her committee work includes serving as National Program Director for the African American Institute, Malawi (1968—1969), a member of the Education Council, Contemporary Arts Committee, San Diego Museum of Art (1975—1978), a board member of the San Diego Mesa College Foundation (1983-) and the African and African-American Studies Research Center, University of California, San Diego, and Chair of the African Arts Council, San Diego Museum of Art.
Provenance:
Donated by Monica Blackmun Visona, 2016.
Restrictions:
Use of original records requires an appointment. Contact Archives staff for more details. Items 1234-1256 restricted. Available to view onsite only.
Rights:
Permission to reproduce images from the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives must be obtained in advance. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
Collection documents, at the grass roots level, the "third wave" of the feminist movement in the early 1990s. It consists primarily of materials created by feminist activists and zines from Ocho y Media, a women's collective and discussion group based in San Diego, California.
Scope and Contents:
The collection includes a wide variety of materials, including zines (published and unpublished), flyers and advertisements, articles, mailers, booklets, photographs, stickers, original art and sketches, a diary, a self-abortion care guide, two scrapbooks with photographs and other materials, and other ephemera. Specifically, the collection includes copies of Ocho y Media's zines and other materials relating to events and actions the group organized, such as open houses and a domestic violence awareness event with The Clothesline Project. Other zines in this collection have content on sexual and reproductive health, domestic violence, third wave feminism, queerness, labor rights and unions, race and racism, romantic relationships, punk and other music subcultures, and other related topics.
Karen Craig, Leilani Clark, Britton Neubacher, Eve Novak, and Torie Quiñones, all members of Ocho y Media, donated the materials to the collection. Donors included personal collections of zines that cover subjects including sexual and reproductive health, labor rights, violence against women, queerness, body image, romantic relationships, personal feelings on third wave feminism, punk music, and more. The collection is useful to researchers interested in third wave feminist groups/collectives, riot grrrl, feminist punk, student organizing, and similar subjects. It is arranged in five series in alphabetical order by the creator or donor of each group of material. Materials date from 1979 to 1999, with the bulk of material dating from the 1990s.
Arrangement:
Collection is arranged into five series.
Series 1: Leilani Clark, undated
Series 2: Karen Craig, 1993-1996, undated
Series 3: Britton Neubacher, 1979-1999, undated
Series 4: Eve Novak, 1993-1998, undated
Series 5: Torie Quinonez, 1990s
Biographical / Historical:
Ocho y Media was a third wave feminist "women's discussion circle and action group" based in San Diego, California in the mid-1990s. The collective met on Mondays at 8:30 pm, the inspiration for their name, which means eight thirty in Spanish, and planned several feminist events in and around San Diego. They held events at the Ché Café, a cooperative café and event/community space on the University of San Diego California campus (still operating as of 2023). These events included domestic violence awareness projects. The group also published at least two volumes of a zine, Ocho y Media.
Zines, a shortened form of Fanzines, derived from magazines, are short, lower end publications often with political or social messages. They often contain poetry, narrative writing, personal statements, missions and manifestos, collaged art, or community knowledge. Zine culture expanded in the late 1980s and early 1990s during the underground feminist punk riot grrrl movement. Typically costing between one and five US dollars, these small, low budget publications helped create solidarity across social and political movements and offered creators emotional and artistic outlets.
This collection is related to the riot grrrl movement, a punk feminist underground music scene that championed women's independence and power. Started in 1991 with the establishment of bands like Bikini Kill and Team Dresch, the riot grrrl movement encouraged women to start music groups, organize and support each other, and fight for feminist causes. Although it was originally a West coast-based movement, riot grrrl spread in part through the production of zines and the interconnectedness of the groups (like Ocho y Media) that created them.
Related Materials:
Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
Miss America 1951 Papers, 1949-2000, NMAH.AC.0888
Archives Center Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) Collection, NMAH.AC.1146
Spokeswoman Magazine, 1972-1980, NMAH.AC.0931
Museum of Menstruation Collection, NMAH.AC.1586
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
Norma Broude and Mary Garrard Papers, AAA.brounorm
Lucy R. Lippard Papers, 1930s-2007, AAA.lipplucy
Ilene Segalove Papers, 1960-2021, AAA.segailen
Jacqueline Skiles Papers, 1963-1980, AAA.skiljacq
Nancy Spero Papers, 1940s-2009AAA.spernanc
May Stevens Papers, 1967-1982, AAA.stevmay
Sylvia Sleigh papers, 1961-1983, AAA.sleisylv
What is Feminist Art? Questionnaire Responses, AAA.whatisfe
Woman's Building (Los Angeles, California), AAA.womabuil
Nina Yankowitz Papers, circa 1950-2017, AAA.AAA.yanknina
Other Repositories
Smith College
Sophia Smith Zine Collection
https://findingaids.smith.edu/repositories/2/resources/749
Duke University
Sarah Wood zine collection
https://archives.lib.duke.edu/catalog/woodsarah
MOVE with New York University (NYU)
The Riot Grrrl Collection
https://guides.nyu.edu/riot-grrrl/finding-aids
Barnard College
The Zine Library
https://zines.barnard.edu/
The People's Archive at the District of Columbia Public Library
Melissa Klein Collection
https://thepeoplesarchive.dclibrary.org/repositories/2/resources/1397
Provenance:
Collection donated to the Archives Center by Leilani Clark, Karen Craig, Britton Neubacher, Eve Novak, and Torie Quinonez in 2018.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Includes one zine, Freak Momma, which Clark co-wrote with Del (last name unknown). The zine refers to pioneering riot grrrl band Bikini Kill, recommends other zines to subscribe to, and contain writings about life in San Diego as a part of the third wave movement. The zine's authors profess devotion to artist Frieda Kahlo for her art that glorifies socially unaccepted facial hair and refer to her throughout the zine.
Biographical / Historical:
Leilani Clark was a member of the Ocho y Media Collective and contributed to zines during the 1990s. She also sang, played guitar, and did spoken word at their meetings. Clark now is a writer and editor based in Northern California. She has published work for The Guardian, Times Magazine, and Mother Jones.
Collection Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Collection Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Collection Citation:
Ocho y Media Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History
The Barbara Rose papers date from 1962 to circa 1969 and measure 1.4 linear feet. Papers include letters, writings, printed material, interviews with artists, panel discussions, and lectures relating to Barbara Rose's research as an art historian.
Scope and Contents:
The Barbara Rose papers date from 1962 to circa 1969 and measure 1.4 linear feet. Papers include letters, interviews with artists, panel discussions, lectures, writings, and printed material relating to Barbara Rose's work as an art historian and critic.
Letters consist of responses to queries and questionnaires Rose and Irving Sandler sent to contemporary artists as research for writing projects. Questionnaires were sesnt in preparation for an article in Art in America on artists' sensibility of the 1960s, with responses from Robert Motherwell, Robert Craig Kauffman, Len Lye, Robert Morris, George Segal, David Hare, and others. A separate query asked sculptors for their assessment of contemporary sculptor's needs and the potential for patronage, and responses are found from Carl Andre, Charles Frazier, Robert Murray, Anthony Padovano, Ron Bladen, Roy Lichtenstein, Len Lye, Sol LeWitt, Heinz Mack, Otto Peine, Dan Flavin, and Donald Judd.
Interviews conducted by Rose between 1965 and circa 1969 are found with Richard Bellamy, Leo Castelli, James E. Davis, Henry Geldzahler, Ivan Karp, Lee Krasner, John Lefebre, John Myers, Donald Judd with Frank Stella, and Tom Wesselmann. All interviews include original sound recordings, and the Judd and Stella, Krasner, and Myers interviews include transcripts. Panel discussions and lectures include sound recordings and transcripts of seven events on a variety of contemporary art and architecture subjects held between 1962 and 1968. Sound recordings are present for five of the events on 10 sound tape reels, and transcripts are present for all events. Participants in the panel discussions and lectures include Barbara Rose, Ronald Davis, Dan Flavin, Robert Kauffman, John Harvey McCracken, Friedel Dzubas, Ansel Adams, Arthur Bierman, Kenneth Rexroth, Edward Taylor, Ernst Karl Mundt, John Bowles, Roy Dean De Forest, Seymour Locks, Walter Hopps, Mark Di Suvero, Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Kynaston McShine, Walter Darby Bannard, Donald Judd, Larry Poons, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Meier, Paul Rudolph, Claes Oldenburg, and Robert Murray.
Writings include photocopied typescripts of "Myth, Symbol, or Me," by Emily Wasserman and "Excerpts from a Work Journal on Flying Sculpture," by Charles Frazier. Printed material consists of two copies of the premiere issue of the 57th Street Review, from Nov. 15, 1966.
Arrangement:
This collection is arranged as 4 series.
Missing Title
Series 1: Letters (0.2 linear feet; Box 1)
Series 2: Interviews (0.6 linear feet; Box 1)
Series 3: Panel Discussions and Lectures (0.5 linear feet; Boxes 1-2)
Series 4: Writings and Printed Material (0.1 linear feet; Box 2)
Biographical / Historical:
Barbara Rose is an American art historian and critic who has published widely in the field of modern American art. Born in 1938 in Washington, DC, Rose studied at the Sorbonne, Smith College, Barnard, and finally, Columbia University under Meyer Shapiro. Rose became immersed in the New York-based circle of modernist artists and curators in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and made her substantial contribution to the discourse on contemporary art with the insider's perspective this afforded her. In 1961, she married the painter Frank Stella and they had two children before their divorce in 1969.
Rose taught at Yale University, Sarah Lawrence, University of California at Irvine and San Diego, and the American University Art in Italy program, and was senior curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, from 1981-1985. A prolific writer, Rose is the author of American Art Since 1900 (1967), The Golden Age of Dutch Painting (1969), American Painting: The 20th Century (Skira, 1969), and monographs on the artists Magdalena Abankawicz, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Rauschenberg, Alexander Liberman, Larry Rivers, and others, as well as dozens of exhibition catalog essays. She held editorial positions at Art in America, Vogue, Artforum, Partisan Review, and Journal of Art, and her writing has also appeared in Art International, Studio International, Arts Magazine, and ARTnews, among many others.
Related Materials:
Barbara Rose papers, 1940-1993 (bulk 1960-1985) are located at The Getty Research Institute Special Collections.
Separated Materials:
Additional papers of Barbara Rose are held by The Getty Research Institute.
Provenance:
Donated 1971-1977 by Barbara Rose.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Occupation:
Art historians -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Art critics -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
