[Part 3] Multitasking as the Belkin’s Collections Assistant: M/T Archives Alias List Projects

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Archival Arrangement and Description / Collections Management / Independent Work / Remote Work / Research/ Analysis / Time Management

This is the third post in a series of five, each building on a project (or more) mentioned in my Belkin Art Gallery poster (see my September 11, 2020 post “Reflecting on a Remote Summer: Collections Assistant at the Belkin Art Gallery”). I worked on these projects in my position as the Belkin’s Collections Assistant from June 2020 to January 2021. This third post focuses on archives-focused projects, with special focus on an alias list project.

Fig. 1. "Marcel Duchamp as Rose Selavy by Man Ray" by Père Ubu is licensed with CC BY-NC 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/

Along with the projects featured in the first two posts of this series, my position as the Belkin’s Collections Assistant also involved working with the Belkin’s Archivist on projects specific to the archives collection. Apart from ongoing data cleaning of database archival descriptions, I worked on an archives project unique to the Belkin: creating an updated alias list of creators (artists, subjects, etc.) in the Morris/ Trasov (M/T) Archive. The M/T Archive is the Belkin’s most notable and largest collection at more than 80m of graphic and other material. Arrangement and description of this collection is a continuous tasks, as the Belkin receives ongoing accruals of materials created and collected by Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov.

Creating this updated alias list entailed close investigation of the Belkin’s database descriptions, relevant internal documents, and online external resources—such as Artists in Canada, artist websites, and mail art directories—to identify key individuals and any of their aliases. Such aliases include not only pseudonyms, but also birth names, and associated networks, collectives, publications, and projects. I also searched for any identifying reference images of the individuals and included these in list entries (with image sources). This list is a working document and is meant to grow with the M/T Archive. Despite some challenging mysteries—like who is "Comet Nirvanno"?—my efforts resulted in a list of over 150 individuals, some with more than 25 aliases and up to 4 reference images.

This project resulted in me:

  • Developing my investigative research skills and knowledge of a niche subject area, both of which assisted me with my other tasks as Collections Assistant—for example, being more comprehensive when requesting copyright permissions
  • Creating an internal tool for the Belkin that has already assisted staff with data cleaning and will make future archival arrangement and description and copyright tasks more efficient

A highlight of this position, working on this unique archives project was and continues to be advantageous to both the Belkin and myself.

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