©THE PETER HUJAR ARCHIVE, LLC/ANNETTE MICHELSON PAPERS, CA.1950-2014, GIFT OF ANNETTE MICHELSON
The critic Annette Michelson has donated her papers to the Getty Research Institute, the Getty announced today. The GRI has also purchased Michelson’s film library and the drawing Blind Time (1982), as well as a 1969 suite of ten lithographs, Earth Projects, both by Robert Morris, whose career Michelson championed. Michelson, a co-founder of the journal October, started her career as a critic and editor for the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune before joining the staff of Artforum. She was also an early faculty member in New York University’s film department.
In a statement, Thomas W. Gaehtgens, the GRI’s director, said: “Annette Michelson has played a hugely significant role in the advancement of scholarship in avant-garde visual culture, especially film, around the world and she continues to do so by donating her unparalleled archive to the GRI…The GRI’s holdings related to the New York art world of the 1960s and 70s are especially rich. Her archive helps make it possible for scholars to trace complex connections through the work of many artists and writers of the period. Connections like these grow exponentially with every such acquisition.”
Michelson’s archive dates back to 1950, and, according to the Getty, among her writings and research is also correspondence with people including Morris, Susan Sontag, Ad Reinhardt, Yvonne Rainer, Martha Rosler, and her colleagues from Artforum and October.