Archives Contextualize Artist's Work for Conservator

As a textile conservator I am trained to search for clues in textiles; a small label, a repair, or the structure of the fabric help me to understand the history of an object. Much like a detective I sometimes have to dig deeper to solve an object’s mysteries. This past year I had the opportunity to conduct in-depth archival research on a set of quilts in the AnacostiaCommunity Museum’s collection (ACM).

Several quilts that are part of an artwork titled The Shroud Series  incorporates fabric patches with photographic images printed on them. The artist Fay Fairbrother designed the quilts based on traditional patterns, and kept them “simple in order for the photographs to speak.”  The quilts juxtapose historic photographs of early twentieth century lynching and gatherings of the Ku Klux Klan with period portraits of African American and white families. This harrowing subject matter made me want to know more about the artists’ life and sources.  

A quilt from The Shroud Series, 2002.0011.0001 Courtesy of Anacostia Community Museum. Photo by Lisa Anderson.

I started my research on Fay Fairbrother by surveying the National African American Museum Project (NAAMP) files in the Anacostia Community MuseumArchives.  The Shroud Series appeared in NAAMP's 1994 inaugural exhibit Imaging Families: Images and Voices. Reading the documents in the files was eye-opening! My archival discoveries include an artist statement and resume, and installation notes and correspondences between the artist, staff members and close friends. From these documents, I learned that the artist studied art history and earned her master's degree in photography at the University of Oklahoma. Installation notes provided important details about how the series was displayed. Through the letters I was able to locate a close friend of Fairbrother and a former professor of hers at the University of Oklahoma. Through interviews with them I learned about the artist’s sources of inspiration, challenges, and working practice.

The research also led me to locate the family photographs and several of the KKK images in the Western History Collection at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.  Several of the lynching images are held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, and the Allen-Littlefield Collection at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia.

Detail of a quilt from The Shroud Series, 2002.0011.0001
Courtesy Anacostia Community Museum. Photo by Lisa Anderson.

Further research revealed the identity of the lynching victims Bennie Simmons, Thomas Shipp, Abram Smith, and Claude Neal (Allen 2000 and the New York Public Library digital collections) but  the identity of the African American families remains unknown. I also found information about other exhibits of Fairbrother's work which helped to contextualize The Shroud Series.

Detail of a quilt from the Shroud Series,2002.0011.0001
Courtesy Anacostia Community Museum. Photo by Lisa Anderson

Copies of documents I gathered from all these archives are now within ACM object files as documentation for the quilts. The archival information I reviewed not only provided context to the quilts I was conserving but helped me to understand the intentions of the artist and how she intertwined her art with her personal experiences.

Annaick Parker

Textile Conservator

Anacostia Community Museum