Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
ERIN: Hi! This is Erin Byrne and Elaina Vitale, Time Capsules Project Catalogers here at the Warhol Museum.
Today we're in the Archives Study Center. We're going to walk you through the re-packing of our Time Capsule trunk.
If you remember our last blog post we did an un-packing for you, and you were able to see the amount of stuff we
got out of this trunk.
So, it will be interesting to see how we get it all back in.
ELAINA: We have a final count of all of the items that we did find in our trunk, and it is something like 3,043 items.
As we've told you in previous blog posts, that means that every single one of those items has a number - we went
through each item, numbered it, described it, and re-housed it in an appropriate manner. So today we're going to
show you some of the exciting things that we've found and also just some of our basic preservation techniques.
ELAINA: Sticking out of the Time Capsule is this yellow paper. This is archival, acid-free paper that we use to line each
Time Capsule – filing cabinet, trunk, or box. It is built to protect the items inside from the materials of the box.
It's acid-free, and does a good job of buffering each of our items from the acids or chemicals in the box itself.
Inside the box, we already have a few items. Unlike a normal archive, we have to re-pack our items in a special manner.
The heaviest items in our Time Capsules go on the bottom of the boxes. In this case, it is a lot of really heavy books,
and heavy serials, in some cases.
ERIN: In our last blog post we mentioned that it takes us a little bit of time before we can determine which items are
particularly interesting or significant. As you saw, with so much bulk coming out of the box, a lot of the things get
lost in the mix, and it's not readily apparent, right on the surface. So what we did for you is we pulled a bunch of
items that after we catalogued, we found out that they were either important for Warhol history, or they had just historical
value from the time period, or we though you just might like to look at them.
So the first folder we're going to start with is photographic material. It's number 46 of our total number of folders from
our trunk. These are photographs from Warhol's film 'Harlot'. It's one of Warhol's first sound films and it was filmed in
1965. The first photo you see is of Mario Montez – he's the one in drag – he's holding the banana. This photo is interesting:
we actually have the film up on display right now on our sixth floor exhibit - it's called 'I Just Want to Watch: Andy
Warhol's Film, Video, and Television.' And there's a whole film of him eating that banana. So, you can see automatically
that we've housed the photos - they're in mylar enclosures. Mylar just helps the protection of the surface of the photo.
Anybody who's ever taken a photo before knows that that's the most important; your emulsion layer.
So, these are just to show you some of the photos from the movie.
ELAINA: Our trunk was full of books as you saw earlier, a lot of poetry, a lot of fiction, a lot of exhibition catalogues.
One of the most exciting ones that we found after going back through everything was this John Lennon London diary from
1969. Inside the diary there is a personal inscription from John, and it is: "To Andy, From John." So we are all very
excited about that.
ERIN: Another interesting item is this exhibition invitation. It's for Paul Thek's exhibit on September 21, 1968.
It's in German language. The interesting thing, though, is the little message Paul Thek himself wrote on the back.
It's personalized to Andy, and he's hoping that he's going to get well very soon. This is timely because in 1968 as
we all know, Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas. So we have a lot of outpouring from other artists, hoping him to get
well during this time.
ELAINA: Within our series 'manuscript material' we catalogued a type-written transcript. It's an interview between
Andy Warhol and John Giorno. We originally though that this might have been an exciting new interview but it's
actually a parody of an interview that Andy and John Giorno did - as a joke. John Giorno you might remember from
Warhol's film 'Sleep'. It's a really great interview. Unfortunately they were joking, but there are some great
quotes inside it. Warhol is quoted as saying - about his painting - that "magic makes them".
ERIN: So I just pulled two examples of our clothing to highlight some of the preservation and storage challenges
we have. Our first coat that you saw in the first video, we weren't sure what it was. We tied down that based on the
buttons this is a New York seal. It's probably a cop uniform from 1820s - 1850s. On the back of the buttons is says
Waterbury Button Company, and that company was in business in 1819, so it's a good possibility, but we're not
exactly sure where this coat comes from. As you can see, we've put little mylar enclosures around the base of the
buttons. This is to prevent the tarnish from the buttons from staining the coat. So any time you have clothing you want to
be very conscious of the seams, and every time that we have clothing that came out of the trunk - the Time Capsules -
folded, we'll go ahead and re-fold them along different seams before we put them back. And we'll pad them out like
we've done here, to prevent any type of deterioration. And you can see we just have another example. This is one
of the band jackets that we found as well and we've done the same thing. We've stuffed it and protected the buttons.
ELAINA: In our otherwise un-glamorous 'business and financial tax records' series, we have the Velvet Underground
and Nico's 1099 form from 1970.
ERIN: In our 'business financial' series we have a few more items that are pretty interesting as they pertain to Warhol
when he was shot in 1968. We have two medical bills that are from that date - they date back. And you can see that they
are overdue, and they've been overdue since June and they're dated in November.
ELAINA: Not all of our correspondence in the Time Capsules is actually addressed to Andy Warhol. For instance, the
envelope that I'm holding is addressed to Fred Hughes, who is Warhol's business partner. It's addressed from Craig
Braun who did the design for the Rolling Stones album 'Sticky Fingers'. It's postmarked March 11, 1971. Inside the
envelope is a letter addressed from Braun regarding the cover art and the model, who is rumored to have been
Joe D'Allesandro, one of Warhol's Superstars.
ELAINA: Now that the 3,000 items in our trunk have been numbered, described, and properly re-housed, they all have
to go back inside the trunk. This can sometimes present a challenge for us in re-packing Time Capsules. The heaviest
items do have to stay on the bottom, and the lighter items - like the costumes that Erin showed earlier - have to stay on top.
ERIN: That way we don't un-do any of the hard work that we did building all of these houses with the weight of 3,000 items.
ELAINA: These 3,000 items took us about three weeks to process with the help of eight people. So, it was a lot of work
and we found out some really cool stuff about Andy Warhol's life and The Factory in the '60s, '70s, and 80s.