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ART Sept. 28 Meeting/NYU Fales Library Downtown Collection



Please join us  for a unique presentation kicking  off our fall season of archives events on Thursday Sept. 28.  
Please see R.S.V.P. information at bottom of message.


ARCHIVES ROUNDTABLE OF METROPOLITAN NEW YORK SEPTEMBER 2000 MEETING NOTICE

Kicking Culture: Postmodern Documentation Strategies and Collecting the Downtown New York 
Avant-garde, 1975 to the Present

In 1995 The Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University began a collecting project to document the downtown New York arts scene that developed in SoHo during the mid-1970s and moved to the Lower East Side in the 1980s. The Downtown collection, as it has come to be known, attempts to document as thoroughly as possible the vibrant outsider arts scene that was tied theoretically to post-structuralism and postmodernism and that saw the creation of outsider galleries, performance art, punk, and a host of other intermedia art works. The collection currently contains over 8000 printed volumes, 300 periodical titles, and some 1200 linear feet of archives and personal papers. Included in the collection are such artists and writers as David Wojnarowicz, Dennis Cooper, Lynne Tillman, Kathy Acker, Karen Finley, Spalding Gray, Gary Indiana, Art Speigelman, and a host of others. Performance spaces and magazines are represented by such collections as the Judson Memorial Church Archive, the Fashion Moda Archive, the High Risk Books Archive, the Between C&D Archive and the Redtape Archive. We have made every attempt to collect the scene on its own terms rather than forcing sometime difficult materials to conform to standardized processing procedures. We are collecting in nearly every medium, including works of art and performance documentation. As such, the collection represents an attempt at postmodern archival practice, in keeping with the content of the materials themselves.

The Downtown Collection is only one of the resources of the Fales Library and Special Collections at NYU, which houses some 200,000 printed volumes and 3000 linear feet of manuscript and archival materials. The general collection documents the history of the English and American Novel from 1700-present. 

Presenters for this event will be Marvin J. Taylor, Director of the Fales Library, and Mike Kelly, Assistant Fales Librarian who will present an overview of the collections and discuss the challenges of collecting postmodern works as well as outsider materials.

We are delighted to welcome you downtown to learn about our collections and hope you will take the opportunity to have dinner at one of the many restaurants in SoHo, or the East or West Village following the meeting.



Date:           Thursday, September 28, 2000
Place:          The Fales Library and Special Collections, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 3rd Floor
        New York University, 70 Washington Square South,        New York, New York 10012

Time:           Social: 5:30-6:15 Program: 6:30-7:30

Directions:     By Subway. Take the 6 train to Astor Place. Follow Lafayette south to West Fourth Street. Make a right. West Fourth becomes Washington Square South and the Library is on the southeast corner of the Square. OR the ACE to West Fourth Street Station at Sixth Avenue. Walk east to the Square. OR the NR to 8th Street, down Broadway to West Fourth Street. OR the 1/9 to Christopher Street. Take West Fourth Street East to the Square.

Fee:            ART Members $3.  Non-members $5.

RSVP:           By September 22, 2000 to fales.library@nyu.edu (preferred) or 212.998.2596.  Please remember 
hosting a meeting represents a financial and meeting space commitment on the part of our hosts.  Please be reasonably sure you can attend before responding. 

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