Saving Our Digital Heritage: Celebrating World Digital Preservation Day with New Funding for the Museum of Glass Archive
By Marie Williams Chant, Digital Archivist
René Roubíček in the Jane Russell Hot Shop. Photograph by Russell Johnson from René Roubíček Residency, April 12 to 16, 2006. Collection of the Museum of Glass Visiting Artist Residency Digital Archive.
In 2023, Museum of Glass launched a new digital archives program funded by the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Over the past four years, the curatorial team has done extensive work to assess, inventory, arrange, and preserve these digital archival materials that document visiting artists in our Hot Shop and the history of glass art in the Pacific Northwest. This World Digital Preservation Day, we’re excited to announce that this collection received an additional grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Recordings at Risk program to support the transfer of over 400 miniDV tapes featuring visiting artists Lino Tagliapietra, Preston Singletary, Mildred Howard, René Roubíček, Martin Blank, Maya Lin, Nancy Callan, and Kazuo Kadonaga. The Recordings at Risk program is made possible by funding from the Mellon Foundation.
This award has allowed us to partner with the audiovisual archivists at Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound (MIPoPS) in Seattle. For years, MIPoPS has raised the alarm about the magnetic media crisis, developed specialized tools to preserve DV tapes, and partnered with cultural heritage organizations to preserve tape-based collections before they degrade. As technology shifts and changes, the window to preserve our digital heritage gets smaller and smaller. This is particularly true for the tapes selected for preservation as a part of this grant, as recent changes in technology has made it increasingly difficult to transfer DV from tape to computer. Partnering with MIPoPS was a natural choice for these materials, and will allow this critical documentation of glass artists to be preserved to archival best standards.
The over 400 tapes selected for preservation include many notable moments here at the museum, including extended footage of Martin Blank’s forty-five day residency in 2008 to create the installation Fluent Steps located outside of the museum’s entrance, renowned Czech glass artists René Roubícek (1922-2018) and Petr Novotný (1952-2024) making bowls, vases, and freely formed objects from colored glass with relief stamping in 2006, and ceramicist Magdalene Odundo exploring the qualities of fused glass in 2011. In addition to footage from our Visiting Artist program, footage from special projects featuring Lino Tagliapietra in Venice in 2007 in support of the exhibition Lino Tagliapietra in Retrospect and Preston Singletary in Alaska in support of the exhibition Preston Singletary: Echoes, Fires, and Shadows will also be preserved.
As we look towards the Museum’s twenty-fifth anniversary in 2027, we are immensely grateful to the support of our funders who have allowed us to preserve the digital heritage of glass art here in the Pacific Northwest. We look forward to sharing our collections in our forthcoming digital collections database, which is set to launch next year.
Dame Magdalene Odundo in the Jane Russell Hot Shop. Photograph from Magdalene Odundo Residency, August 10 to 14, 2011. Collection of the Museum of Glass Visiting Artist Residency Digital Archive.
Footage of Martin Blank Residency 2003, June 27, 2003. Captured 1:1 from the original MiniDV tape via FireWire in 2013. Collection of the Museum of Glass Visiting Artist Residency Digital Archive (MB06270301).
This project is supported by a Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (@clirnews). The grant program is made possible by funding from the Mellon Foundation (@mellonfoundation). Additional funding for the Museum of Glass Digital Archive comes from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust (@murdocktrust) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (@us_imls).