If archives have traditionally focused on preserving national and corporate records and ensuring a place in history for prominent cultural figures, the Downtown Collection works as a counter-archive, documenting a community of artists on a social and cultural margin. These artists developed alternative institutions to support their work, which broke decisively with convention and thematized voices that could not be heard in the commercial and social mainstream. The collection’s curatorial mission is allied with a wider intellectual shift that took shape in the 1980s, one that entailed a re-examination of assumptions about the making of archives and the writing of history. Finally, it is testament to the vision of Marvin Taylor, who founded the Downtown Collection in 1994.
The Contexts section includes readings that illuminate the activist collecting philosophy of the Downtown Collection. For a short bibliography of related material, see Selected Readings.
Image credit: Betsey Johnson, “Assemblage with Lycra Outfit,” from Artifacts at the End of a Decade, ed. Carol Huebner and Steven Watson, 1981. Downtown Collection, Fales Library.