Skowhegan audio archives donated - Front Page

Art in America, March, 2004

The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine has donated its audio archives of lectures to five museums. The archives will be available to the public at the libraries of the Archives of American Art in Washington, D.C.; the Art Institute of Chicago; Colby College in Waterville, Me.; the Getty Center in Los Angeles; and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Consisting of more than 500 lectures presented during the school's summer residency program since 1952, the recordings include talks by visual artists, poets, architects, philosophers, journalists, curators, historians and choreographers. Among the artists are Ben Shahn, David Smith, Jacob Lawrence, Ad Reinhardt, Vito Acconci, Richard Serra, Agnes Martin, Alice Neel, Fred Wilson and Janine Antoni. The talks were originally recorded on reel-to-reel tape, but have been digitally reproduced on more than 700 CDs. The original recordings will be stored at the Archives of American Art. Skowhegan plans to make additional sets available to institutions for purchase.