5
Legacy Building
During my graduate studies at Pratt, I became drawn to the idea of archives as legacy building entities, in both good and harmful ways. I started my studies exploring the Presidential Library System's move to a completely digital format and what effects that would create. As my studies continued, I chose to combine my love of archives and art in looking at projects that focus on art documentation and special collections. Below are examples of various projects from my graduate studies and after that focus on legacy building in a variety of ways. 

The following titles link to documentation for each of the following projects.


I
Penelope Ziedler RFP


This was a semester-long group project for INFO-661 Art Documentation. Our group was assigned to create a fictitious sculpture artist and the definition of her estate and a preservation plan for her executors, culminating in a request for proposal (RFP). We were tasked to prepare and assess her collection and to document it to promote her artistic legacy. From these perimeters, we cataloged a collection of sculptures and archival materials from our own metadata schema. In the end, we decided to present two options for establishing a legacy plan: a general long-term preservation plan with an archival donation with an option to form an artist-endowed foundation.


II
Paper Legacy Project and Special Exhibitions
As the 2019/2020 Library Technical Services Fellow for the Thomas J. Watson Library, my work focused on aspects of art librarianship with regards to CONTENTdm collections. CONTENTdm is a digital asset management system (DAMS) run by Online Computer Library System, a nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large."¹¹ My work within Watson’s collections was creating a metadata crosswalk between the Metropolitan Museum’s DAMS, NetX, and Watson’s CONTENTdm with regards to special collection exhibition views. 

As the fellowship continued, I took on another project with the head of Book Conservation, Mindell Dubansky, digitizing the Paper Legacy Project, a collecting initiative to document the work and histories of prominent professional American decorative paper artists active from the late 1960s to the present.1 In addition to digitization efforts, I populated appropriate metadata in order to publish the collections on CONTENTdm. In 2022, the Grolier Club mounted an exhbition entitled Pattern and Flow: A Golden Age of American Decorated Paper, 1960s-2000s


III
James L. Steg Estate My work with Amanda and the Orleans Gallery, introduced me to Frances Swigart, artist and widow to Jim Steg, a prominent New Orleans printmaker and professor. During the Summer 2019, I worked with Frances to organize his paper prior to their donation to the Smithsonian Archives of American Art (AAA). The AAA was interested in acquiring Jim’s papers since he possessed a large amount of ephemera from his time in the Ghost Army. The Ghost Army or 23rd Headquarters Special Troops was the first mobile, multimedia, tactical deception unit in US Army history. Comprised 82 officers and 1,023 men this top-secret unit was capable of simulating two whole divisions—approximately 30,000 men—and used visual, sonic, and radio deception to fool German forces during World War II’s final year.¹³

I digitized the 1.6 linear feet of papers and produced a DACS compliant finding aid. Years later, a curator at the National World War II Museum approached Frances, and using my Finding Aid, was able to easily discoverd the artifacts he wanted from AAA for a special exhibition opening in March 2020 about the Ghost Army.


IV
Stan VanDerBeek and the Movie-Drome 


My work with the Stan VanDerBeek estate started in 2019. I began by cataloging works of art. Over the pandemic my job expanded into digitizing rare and fragile materials, creating housing and storage systems for long-term preservation, sunsetting the studio space, and helping support the Museum of Modern Art’s acquisition of the Move-Drome work. I aided the executive director in editing the installation manual for the project in addition to finding lost transparencies within the archive to complete the project.

I managed the move of the archive to offsite storage, hiring skilled art handlers to pack all artwork and coordingating with fine art shippers to move all packed works to long term storage.


Fin for now.



11."About OCLC". OCLC. Retrieved November 16, 2025. 
12.
Example of the papers designed by the Moth Marblers(Ingrid Butler and Dana Draper)
13.
www.nationalww2museum.org/visit/exhibits/traveling-exhibits/ghost-army-combat-con-artists-world-war-ii

---

←6