Wildenstein Plattner Institute
February 17, 2022 – As supporting programming for The Westport Idea exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Westport, joined MOCA for a free discussion led by Huffa Frobes-Cross, Tom Wesselmann Catalogue Raisonné project manager.
The Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Inc. is a non-profit foundation dedicated to the study of art history and to fostering the accessibility, cataloguing, and digitization of archival materials that support critical research in the field.
This October, The Catalogue Raisonné Scholars Association (CRSA) inaugurated their new web series program. The WPI was pleased to participate in their first installment. The webinar focused on the Tom Wesselmann Digital Corpus, launched in June 2020.
The featured conversation between WPI colleagues Huffa Frobes-Cross, Project Manager of the Wesselmann Catalogue Raisonné, and Caitlin Sweeney, Director of Digital Publications, took viewers step-by-step through the development of a unique cataloguing system: from the initial considerations that went into choosing the most appropriate format, to the particular challenges of maintaining an online database-in-progress.
A Q&A session was facilitated by Tracee Ng, CRSA Programming Committee.
Thank you to Carl Schmitz and Tracee Ng for organizing this event.
On Thursday, May 13, 2021 the WPI gathered Huffa Frobes-Cross, project manager of the Tom Wesselmann Digital Catalogue Raisonné, and Samantha Rowe, archivist, to introduce the second iteration of the Discovering Wesselmann webinar series. Discovering Wesselmann: The Early Exhibitions considered the sparsely documented shows form Judson Gallery, Tanager Gallery, and Green Gallery between the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The webinar concluded with a conversation with special guest Marcus Ratliff, the principal founder of Judson Gallery.
The Discovering Wesselmann series continues the WPI’s own exploration of Wesselmann’s archives, as we prepare our records for WPI Digital Archives and bolster the Tom Wesselmann Digital Corpus with more material.
Note: Due to technical issues, the first two minutes of Discovering Wesselmann were recorded after the webinar broadcast. The content was recreated to the exact same script, with no changes to the slideshow or images displayed.
Our archivist Samantha Rowe chaired a panel at CAA on Friday, February 12, 2021. A live Q & A took place from 12:00PM-12:30PM (EST). Sandrine Canac, PhD, Director of Digital Archival Projects, Samantha Rowe and five panelists from top institutions discussed the nebulous line between art object and archival record.
Art historians, archivists and curators rely on such taxonomies and classifications to maintain order, and thus, gain intellectual control over collections. Furthermore, the contexts in which these objects are displayed or conserved ultimately affect their meaning and raise important ontological questions. Five speakers will explore these points of contention, which are further complicated by the recent turn toward the digital realm and virtual exhibitions.
Order of Panelists & Papers
1) Nicholas Martin, New York University Special Collections
Title: Enduring Contextualizations: On Exhibition Loans and Library Collections
2) Christine S. Slobogin, PhD candidate, Birkbeck, University of London
Title: Diagrams, Doodles, or Drawings? The Ephemeral Visual Knowledge of Dickie Orpen’s Surgical Art
3) Dorian J. Fraser, PhD candidate, Concordia University
Title: Transsubjectivity, mail art and the archival topos: D.I.Y. visual cultures of gender nonconforming communities in the 1980s
4) Caitlin Condell, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Title: Lost and Found: Recovering the Ephemera of E. McKnight Kauffer
5) Barbara Reisinger, PhD, University of Vienna
Title: Paper in Limbo: The Afterlife of Andy Warhol’s Cow Wallpaper
Our Project Manager for the Tom Wesselmann Catalogue Raisonné Huffa Frobes-Cross also participated in:
Crisis and Invention: Digital Publishing after 2020
On Saturday, February 13th at 6pm, the WPI’s Huffa Frobes-Cross spoke about his work as assembling and researching a digital catalogue raisonné.
His talk was entitled ‘The Tom Wesselmann Digital Corpus: Catalogue Raisonnés and Digital Publishing’
On December 16, 2020, the Wildenstein Platter Institute hosted a conversation between our archivist, Samantha Rowe, and the project manager for the Tom Wesselmann Catalogue Raisonné, Huffa Frobes-Cross. Working between the Tom Wesselmann Papers and the artist’s work, Huffa and Samantha discussed how archival research intersects with and supports the development of this catalogue raisonné project.
This webinar provided an exclusive look into the Tom Wesselmann Papers sourced from the artist’s archives.
The WPI invites you to explore the Tom Wesselmann Digital Corpus: a searchable database of works recorded by the Estate of the Artist that incorporates the WPI’s ongoing research for the forthcoming Tom Wesselmann Digital Catalogue Raisonné.
The Wildenstein Plattner Institute (WPI) is working in close collaboration with the Estate of Tom Wesselmann on the Digital Catalogue Raisonné of the artist’s work. Prior to publication of the first installment, which will focus on Wesselmann’s celebrated Great American Nudes series, the WPI will continually update the status of their research with an online initiative called the Tom Wesselmann Digital Corpus. This advanced searchable database is freely available for public use and will be continually updated as works are vetted and approved by the Wesselmann Catalogue Raisonné Committee.
The Digital Corpus is based on the records of the estate and includes what the artist referred to as “unique major works” and “oil studies.” Drawings and multiples will be added to the corpus at a later date.
Initially, images of these works are presented in black-and-white with title and date. As works are vetted and approved by the Wesselmann committee for inclusion in the catalogue raisonné, the WPI will publish a color photograph and verified cataloguing information.
The Digital Corpus will provide an unprecedented opportunity to navigate the breadth of the artist’s work and to utilize the most up-to-date catalogue raisonné research in real time.
If you would like the WPI to confirm that the work in your possession corresponds to the work recorded in the Digital Corpus, we ask that you please submit your work here for vetting by the Wesselmann Committee.
Please note: for a limited time, the WPI will waive submission fees for works from the Great American Nudes series.
