Book Collects Little-Known Collections

When Angelenos think of local archives, they think of the vast, distinguished collections of the Huntington Library or UCLA.

But Los Angeles is home to hundreds of lesser known archives, containing everything from the world’s largest collection of Armenian coins to thousands of aerial photographs of Southern California.

Now, for the first time, information on these little-known treasure troves has been collected in a book titled “Cultural Inheritance LA: A Directory of Less Visible Archives and Collections in the Los Angeles Region.”

A project of the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, the book supplies vital statistics on 178 public and private caches of documents, artifacts and other items.

Among the collections are the Automobile Club of Southern California’s History Archive, the International Gay and Lesbian Archive, the Antelope Valley Indian Museum, the Italian Oral History Project, the Ralph Miller Golf Library, the collection of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee and the archives of an Asian American comedy group, Cold Tofu.

Robert G. Marshall, who headed the advisory forum for the project, said the sometimes obscure collections are crammed with information on the city’s hundreds of communities and ethnic enclaves, data that rarely found its way into older archives that emphasized white mainstream culture.

“There’s always been the traditional history of Los Angeles being told through the main repositories, but there’s an additional history of L.A. that is contained in many of the smaller collections,” said Marshall, head of the Urban Archives at Cal State Northridge.

“There’s so much rich history out there and it’s not all being collected by the major institutions. But that story needs to be told.”

Marshall points to such invaluable but not widely known collections as that of the Chicano Resource Center at the East Los Angeles Public Library, which includes materials on the Mexican American experience from 1848 to the present.

“UCLA doesn’t have that kind of collection,” he points out.

The directory will be released at a scholarly symposium, “Mapping L.A.: A Global Prototype,” today and Tuesday at the Getty Center.

The 350-page reference book will be available without charge to anyone who requests it until the run of 3,000 copies is depleted. It can be obtained by writing to the Getty Research Institute, Suite 1100, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90049-1688, or by calling (310) 440-6222.

The first day of the symposium is by invitation only, but the second day is open to the public. Parking reservations are required and can be made by calling (310) 440-7300.

‘Variety of Materials Really Remarkable’

Getty staff member Karen Stokes, who managed the project officially named “L.A. as Subject,” explained why the Getty became involved.

“We’re an international cultural organization that has the resources to be located anywhere in the world,” she said. “We’ve chosen to be located in Los Angeles and part of the obligation of that choice is to be an active and engaged citizen of Los Angeles.

“We’re interested in sharing our resources more effectively with a broader audience, and this kind of collaboration makes that possible.”

The project is important for many reasons, said Deborah Marrow, interim director of the Getty Institute and director of the Getty grant program.

“It’s crucial to let people know of all these wonderful cultural resources in the L.A. region,” Marrow said. “I think the variety of materials in the area is really remarkable, and it well represents the extraordinary diversity of Los Angeles as a city.”

According to Marshall, participants in the project hope the directory will help make future histories of Los Angeles more inclusive and more reflective of this richness and complexity.

The professional archivists in the group also hope to share what they know about preserving collections and displaying them with the enthusiastic amateurs who devote so much time and energy to their often idiosyncratic collections.

Most of the collections in the directory are not administered by professional archivists, Marshall said, “but they certainly have amazing collections and an amazing desire to preserve the history of their communities.”

In an unusual move, the directory’s creators asked the people who administer the archives and collections to describe them as they saw fit.

One result of the project, according to Marshall, was that the so-called elite institutions and the less famous ones found they had much in common. New alliances and relationships among the institutions are being formed.

“Now we’re all sitting at the same table talking to each other, and I don’t think that happened in the past,” he said. “That’s what’s exciting.”

Directory to Be Updated Regularly

Since putting the book together, the group has found additional collections to include in future editions. Stokes said the plan is to update the volume every other year under the auspices of a different local university.

The “L.A. as Subject” project involved churches, government agencies, neighborhood organizations and artists, as well as archivists.

In connection with the launch of the directory, the project is sponsoring two exhibits that draw on photos and other materials from the widely dispersed institutions included in the directory. A show on the coast communities between Ventura and Orange counties is on view at the Social and Public Art Resource Center in Venice, and “Less Visible Material Culture in the Central City Corridor” can be seen at the Watts Labor Community Action Committee in Los Angeles.