The AC Project Room records measure 12.2 linear feet and date from 1965-2012. The collection documents the gallery's exhibitions and co-founder Paul Bloodgood's efforts to promote the work of artists such as Doug Aitken, Michel Auder, Paul Bloodgood himself, Robert Breer, Anne Chu, Aki Fujiyoshi, Isa Genzken, Joseph Grigely, Paula Hayes, Kim Jones, Byron Kim, Christina Mackie, Josiah McElheny, Arpiani Pagliarini, Kathleen Schimert, Jane and Louise Wilson, among others. The bulk of the collection dates from 1989-2001 and consists of exhibition files, artists files, guest books, press files, photographs, gallery administration and financial documentation, and sales and inventory records.
Scope and Contents:
The AC Project Room records measure 12.2 linear feet and date from 1965-2012. The collection documents the gallery's exhibitions and co-founder Paul Bloodgood's efforts to promote the work of artists such as Doug Aitken, Michel Auder, Paul Bloodgood himself, Robert Breer, Anne Chu, Aki Fujiyoshi, Isa Genzken, Joseph Grigely, Paula Hayes, Kim Jones, Byron Kim, Christina Mackie, Josiah McElheny, Arpiani Pagliarini, Kathleen Schimert, Jane and Louise Wilson, among others. The bulk of the collection dates from 1989-2001 and consists of exhibition files, artists files, guest books, press files, photographs, gallery administration and financial documentation, and sales and inventory records.
Administrative materials include leases for Renwick and Broome Streets; operational correspondence and correspondence with artists, dealers, and curators; a business plan and lists of operational activities; an annotated calendar; checklists; contracts; invoices; gallery floorplans; intern notebooks; notes; contact lists; project timelines and notebooks; and documentation about storage issues. Artist files include correspondence; clippings; press releases; exhibition announcements; checklists; photographic material; press packets; artist bios; catalogs; loan forms; notes; proposals; shipping invoices; inventories; and info sheets. Two artist files contain born digital media. Exhibition files include guest books; schedules of exhibitions and special events; artist statements and bios; checklists; clippings; proposals; press releases; slides, photographs, and transparencies depicting installation views and artwork; and notes. Financial records include invoices; correspondence; ledgers; operational budgets; royalty statements; and a binder documenting the gallery's finances from 2000-2001. Inventory and sales records include inventories of work by artists represented by the gallery; notes and lists related to sales; and sales receipts, invoices, and worksheets. Printed material includes clippings; exhibition catalogs and announcements; business cards and blank post cards; press packets; publications related to exhibitions; posters; and press releases. Photographic material includes color and black and white photographs, slides, transparencies, and photocopies or digital prints of events held at the gallery, installation views, works of art, and interior and exterior views of the gallery spaces. Facsimile was the gallery's most common method of communication and the bulk of correspondence found throughout the collection is faded.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 7 series.
Series 1: Administrative Records, 1976-2012 (1.00 linear feet; Box 1, OV 13)
Series 2: Artist Files, 1965-2001 (4.30 linear feet; Box 1-6)
Series 3: Exhibition Files, 1989-2001 (2.90 linear feet; Box 6-9)
Series 4: Financial Records, 1992-2001 (0.40 linear feet; Box 9)
Series 5: Inventory and Sales Records, 1992-2001 (0.30 linear feet; Box 9)
Series 6: Printed Material, 1970-2001 (1.50 linear feet; Box 9-11, OV 14)
Series 7: Photographic Material, 1973-2001 (1.80 linear feet, Box 11-12)
Biographical / Historical:
AC Project Room was an independent, artist-run commercial gallery that operated in New York City from 1990 to 2001. It was co-founded by artists Paul Bloodgood, Alissa Friedman, and Anne Chu. The gallery began in a spare room at Art Cart in 1989, an artist-run art transportation and installation company, as the Brand-X Gallery (The Art Cart Gallery), and held permanent locations at 15 Renwick Street, 585 Broome Street, and 453 West 17th Street in Manhattan. In addition to solo and group exhibitions that cut across formal and generational lines, the gallery organized performances and symposiums, collaborated with other galleries, dealers, and curators, and became an informal space for people to gather in community.
Provenance:
The collection was donated in 2019 by Kelly E. Adams, widow of Paul Bloodgood.
Restrictions:
This collection is open for research. Access to original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center. Researchers interested in accessing born-digital records or audiovisual recordings in this collection must use access copies. Contact References 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.
The records of Artists Talk on Art (ATOA) measure 64.4 linear feet and 317.43 gigabytes and date from circa 1974-2018. The bulk of the records consist of extensive video and sound recordings of events organized by the group featuring artists, critics, historians, dealers, curators and writers discussing contemporary issues in the American art world in hundreds of panel discussions, open screenings, and dialogues held in New York City. Events began in 1975 and continue to the present; recordings in the collection date from 1977 and 2016. A smaller group of records include administrative files, panel flyers, three scrapbooks, as well as photographs, slides, and negatives of panel discussions and participants.
Scope and Contents:
The records of Artists Talk on Art (ATOA) measure 64.4 linear feet and 317.43 gigabytes and date from circa 1974-2018. The bulk of the records consist of extensive video and sound recordings of events organized by the group featuring artists, critics, historians, dealers, curators and writers discussing contemporary issues in the American art world in hundreds of panel discussions, open screenings, and dialogues held in New York City. Events began in 1975 and continue to the present; recordings in the collection date from 1977 and 2016. A smaller group of records include administrative files, panel flyers, three scrapbooks, as well as photographs, slides, and negatives of panel discussions and participants.
ATOA's recordings chronicle the American art world, covering critical discussions and significant art world issues over five decades. Thousands of artists such as Will Barnet, Louise Bourgeois, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Robert De Niro, Agnes Denes, Michael Goldberg, Robert Longo, Ana Mendieta, Robert Morris, Elizabeth Murray, Alice Neel, Philip Pavia, Howardena Pindell, Larry Rivers, Sylvia Sleigh, Kahinde Wiley, Hannah Wilke, David Wojnarowicz, and others speak about their work. The original recordings exist in a variety of formats, including U-Matic and VHS videotape, MiniDVs, sound cassettes and sound tape reels. ATOA digitized most of the video and sound recordings prior to donating the collection.
The collection also includes printed histories, board and program committee meeting minutes, financial statements, general correspondence files of the president and chair, attendance statistics, grant files, panel participant release forms, sixteen panel transcripts, a complete set of panel flyers (many are annotated) and other printed materials, three dismantled scrapbooks, as well as photographs, slides, and negatives of panels and panel participants.
Arrangement:
The records are arranged into nine series.
Series 1: Adminstrative Files, 1974-2013 (0.4 linear feet, Box 1)
Series 2: Director's and Chairman's Correspondence, 1977-2006 (0.4 linear feet, Box 1)
Series 3: Grant Files, 1977-2009 (1 linear foot, Boxes 1-2)
Series 4: Panel Release Forms, 1978-2012 (1 linear foot, Boxes 2-3)
Series 6: Printed Materials, 1975-2015 (0.8 linear feet, Boxes 3-4; 0.434 GB, ER02)
Series 7: Scrapbooks, 1975-1989 (0.2 linear feet, Box 4)
Series 8: Photographic Materials, circa 1975-circa 2000 (1 linear foot, Boxes 4-5)
Series 9: Video and Sound Recordings of Events, 1977-2016 (59 linear feet, Boxes 6-65; 317.43 GB, ER03-ER04)
Biographical / Historical:
Established in 1974 and still active in New York, Artists Talk on Art is the art world's longest running and most prolific aesthetic panel discussion series organized by artists for artists. Founded by Lori Antonacci, Douglas I. Sheer, and Robert Wiegand, the forum has presented 6,000 artists in nearly 1,000 documented panels or dialogues. ATOA held its first panel, "Whatever Happened to Public Art," on January 10, 1975 and it drew a "crowd" of 77 people. In the decades that followed, ATOA presented dozens of panels or dialogues a year, tackling such diverse topics as "What is Happening with Conceptual Art," with Louise Lawler and Lawrence Weiner; "Painting and Photography: Defining the Difference," with Sarah Charlesworth, Jack Goldstein, Joseph Kosuth, Barbara Kruger, and Robert Mapplethorpe; "Organizing Arts Activism," with Lucy Lippard; "The Artist and the Epidemic—an information panel about AIDS"; "Cross-generational Views of Feminism"; and hundreds more.
Provenance:
The Artists Talk on Art (ATOA) records, including digital files of the video and sound recordings, were donated to the Archives in 2016 by Douglas Sheer, Chairman of ATOA.
Restrictions:
This collection is open for research. Access to original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center.
Researchers interested in accessing born-digital records or audiovisual recordings in this collection must use access copies. Contact References 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.
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Jean Milant, 2015 July 20. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
An interview of Jean Milant, conducted 2015 July 20, by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, for the Archives of American Art at Milant's home in Los Angeles, California.
Jean Milant discusses growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and his French and German heritage; his introduction to art instruction in high school and further studies at the University of Wisconsin; his trips to Europe and New York City as an undergraduate art student; his time as a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, and his work at the Tamarind Institute printmaking program and his introduction to Los Angeles; his work at Tamarind with Ed Ruscha, Sam Francis, Ed Moses, and Ken Price, among others; the beginnings of Cirrus Gallery and Cirrus Editions and his search for backers for the two endeavors; his partnership with Terry Inch as a backer for Cirrus. Mr. Milant also describes the decision to move his gallery and printmaking shop to downtown Los Angeles in 1979; the support of Robert Egelston and the collector Donald Marron and other collectors who first subscribed to his print editions; his experiences in France with Minnie de Beauvau-Craon; the gallery and museum scene in Los Angeles in the early '70s and '80s; his efforts to promote Los Angeles as a vibrant center of art, including trips to Europe in the early '70s to show his artists; the creation of Ed Ruscha's prints using food; working with Bruce Nauman and John Baldessari to create prints; the creation of the Los Angeles Visual Arts group of L.A. art dealers; his involvement with the creation of the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art in 1974; his work with the artist Guy de Cointet and Mr. Cointet's early performances at Cirrus Gallery; the opening of MOCA in 1984; his desire to create a think-tank institute to help create a viable future for art. Mr. Milant also recalls Garo Antreasian, Newton Harrison, June Wayne, Frank Gehry, Robert Irwin, Eugene Sturman, Matsumi Kanemitsu, Ken Tyler, Riko Mizuno, Irving Blum, Gerry Rosen, Robert Overby, David Trowbridge as well as Chris Burden, Greg Card, Karen Carson, Craig Kauffman, Marian Goodman, Alain Rivière, Charles Christopher Hill, Steven Leiber, Viva, Michel Auder, and Jonas Wood, among others.
Biographical / Historical:
Jean Robert Milant (1943- ) is an art dealer and publisher in Los Angeles, California. Hunter Drohojowska-Philp is an art critic and writer from Beverly Hills, California.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
Occupation:
Art dealers -- California -- Los Angeles Search this
Publishers -- California -- Los Angeles Search this
