Oral History:
Where Archives Meet Artistic Legacies

Words by Josie Naron and Samantha Rowe

What is the benefit of oral history as it relates to art, particularly when using a traditionally audio-centered medium to describe visual works? Oral history is both an archival practice and a medium that goes beyond the scope of archives, offering the opportunity to co-create an aural record of the past with significant implications for the present. When it intersects with visual art — and more broadly speaking, with art-as-archives, or the archival documentation of art — the possibilities can be endless. This article offers a brief overview of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute’s (WPI) efforts to create a tripartite structure of art, oral histories, and archival records, all of which have more to offer each other in combination than in isolation. We argue that oral history is a practical—and exciting—medium to take up complicated questions of artistic practice, public memory, and the stewardship of artists’ works and legacies. 

Founded in 2016, the WPI is a non-profit foundation that compiles and publishes digital catalogues raisonnés and provides access to archival material to advance art historical research. Launched in 2020, the WPI Oral Histories began as a pilot program to capture firsthand accounts of WPI-affiliated researchers and scholars as they reflected on their experiences working on catalogue raisonné projects. For those who may be unfamiliar, catalogues raisonnés are art publications that are scholarly compilations of an artist’s oeuvre and are used as critical tools for researching the provenance and attribution of works of art. It often takes years—even decades—to complete a catalogue raisonné. In recognition of the complex, involved nature of crafting these publications, the WPI developed plans for an oral history project that would help demystify catalogue raisonné research and celebrate the efforts of those who work on them. After months of planning and preparation, an initial round of four oral histories were conducted with select researchers and scholars who were instrumental in these projects.

WPI Oral Histories landing page

Early recordings for the Jasper Johns and Paul Gauguin series were informative, particularly for researchers working on similar topics or for those interested in institutional memory, but we recognized a need to broaden the scope of the collection. Developing and researching catalogues raisonnés is a highly technical process. While documenting this process yields significant value—in a sense, giving researchers a chance to explain how their personal and professional backgrounds play out in the context of the decisions they make—the presumptive audience for these oral histories is narrow, speaking to researchers and art historians working on similar topics and projects. By expanding not only what the oral histories document, but who, the WPI Oral Histories has embraced the possibilities that a broader scope can offer. Instead of solely focusing on research as a representation of the artist, in recent months our oral histories have sought to create a more personal frame of reference for understanding artists’ working environments, their oeuvres, and their relevance in a broader art historical context. Now, the oral histories feature accounts from members of artists’ estates and foundations who are instrumental contributors to the WPI’s catalogue raisonné projects, as well as individuals with varying personal and professional connections to the artist. All have been active, in some shape or form, in perpetuating the legacies of their respective artists, and all have a unique story to share. 

Although the content of the oral histories varies, a subject’s life history or reflections on a particular theme are consistent elements. The WPI’s earliest oral histories included some of these elements, but largely focused on the professional identity of the interviewee and how that influences their current work. But the WPI’s more recent oral histories favor vivid, experiential description, presenting elements of an artist’s studio practices or life history that give insight to existing archival materials and works of art themselves. Corresponding to forthcoming digital catalogue raisonné publications, the WPI’s more recent oral history interviews transcend traditional art historical narratives by offering more personal, nuanced accounts on Pop artist Tom Wesselmann and the preeminent African-American collagist and painter, Romare Bearden. It is one thing to look at Bearden’s collage work and marvel at its intricacy; it is another to hear the firsthand recollection from his niece, Diedra Harris-Kelley, now current co-director of the Romare Bearden Foundation, of observing Bearden piece together scraps of paper on his work table. Looking at Wesselmann’s body of work, one might recognize Monica Serra, Wesselmann’s frequent muse and model, present in a significant number of his works. But without her oral history, there would be scant documentation of Monica’s experiences of perceiving herself as represented in Wesselmann’s work — and how she navigates that responsibility, today, as Studio Manager of the Estate of Tom Wesselmann. Instead of approaching artists and their works from a studied remove, the oral histories now seek to reconstruct their lives and works through their interactions with those around them.

Broadening the scope of the oral histories has also allowed the WPI to better integrate the oral history initiatives into its existing archival holdings and publications. When work begins on a catalogue raisonné project, as part of the contractual agreement between the WPI and artists’ estates or foundations, the WPI typically digitizes a significant amount of the artists’ records. These archival materials are crucial within the catalogue research process, and also take on new life as publicly available digital resources on the WPI Digital Archives. For the WPI Oral Histories, specifically, these archival collections allow for key historical actors to resurface both inside and outside of the archives. Certain names recur throughout the Tom Wesselmann Papers: those of gallerists, artists, curators, collectors, art dealers, muses, models, and more. Though many of these individuals are no longer with us, the archives help identify significant topics and themes, which can then be addressed during the interviews. Archival records are frozen in the moment of their creation, unable to “speak” beyond the context given to them via archival description. An oral history is more reflective, capturing similar information at an entirely different moment in time. The resultant oral histories connect to the archives but also go beyond them. Though entirely different in format, both archives and oral histories can only be strengthened by each other’s existence.

In a sense, then, the WPI’s oral histories and archives are connected in an almost circular fashion. One can move between records, oral histories, and artworks, drawing connections between the three categories and creating references that explicitly tie them together. In several of the WPI’s oral histories, particularly those in the Wesselmann series, we have even experimented with integrating archival materials and artworks into the interviews as prompts. This is a well-established oral history practice, often used to jog older narrators’ memories, but it’s also a useful tool to establish structure within an interview. In the pre-interview preparations for Carroll Janis’s interview—Janis is the son of Sidney Janis, Wesselmann’s long-time gallerist—we helped Janis select a handful of his favorite, or otherwise significant, Wesselmann artworks. Later, the interviewer used these as prompts to discuss Wesselmann’s stylistic periods, particular exhibitions, and shifts in the art world at large. Within Connie Glenn’s two interview sessions, the long-time Pop Art collector and art historian frequently referenced a 1960s-era Art in America article that captured on film her early Pop Art purchases. The article itself, with no surrounding context, is a significant but static record. But by incorporating it into a reflective discussion, it came alive in a new way, offering Glenn the chance to bring new insights from the present to what is on the page from the past. When archival records are introduced into these oral histories, they become a fascinating composite of past, present, and future, as the interviewer and narrator dance between time periods and memories, trying to put themselves in the shoes of both past subject and present.

Experimental oral history approaches like the ones described above are an imperfect science, and one that we’re still assessing how best to utilize. Sometimes integrating archival records into interviews can yield incredible results; other times, they fall flat. Janis, for example, was hesitant to comment on certain pieces of correspondence in retrospect, noting that, “I would have to read these letters, because I can only say what I’ve already said.” But even these moments of slippage offer fascinating commentary on the nature of memory. As the WPI Oral Histories continues to grow, we will undoubtedly continue to refine our methods and develop new ways to integrate archival materials into the interview process. But certain tenets have been established and will remain the same. Whether the interviewee is a model or studio assistant who helped to create the artist’s work, or a collector or gallerist who advocated for the consumption of it, the WPI’s oral histories will continue to examine questions of artistic legacy and public memory through a variety of lenses. As Glenn noted at the conclusion of one of her interview sessions, “It [the oral history process] makes me look back at my own records and own thoughts and see what happened 50 years ago.” Glenn’s remark, in essence, is the guiding mission of what we hope to accomplish with this oral history initiative. As we continue to look to the past for insights into the present—and future—of art history, one thing remains certain: whatever happens, the archives will remain central to what comes next.