Archives & Artist Legacy

Creating, Sustaining and Using Artist Archives

Sinclair, Jeanie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-9823-7235 (2023) Archives & Artist Legacy. In: Experiencing the Archive: Archives & Artist Legacy, 18 January 2023, Bill's Attic, Krowji, Redruth.

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Abstract / Summary

This workshop explored the idea of artistic legacies, as part of ‘Experiencing the Archive’, a Knowledge Exchange project funded by Research England with Arts University Plymouth.

Who creates a legacy? Artist, institution, public, academics? This workshop explores how an artistic legacy is created, sustained, contradicted and undermined. Participants will explore how archives are used to create artistic legacies, and how the custodians of artistic legacies attempt to protect them. Despite her career as arguably the most internationally successful British modernist sculptor, gossip persists around Hepworth’s life. Spread through unauthorised biographies, gallery talks, magazine articles and exhibition tours that obsess over her ability as a wife and mother, insidious gossip is repeated and undermines her legacy through misogynistic personal criticism. The rumours and unpleasant gossip about Hepworth continue to circulate through local stories in spite of her carefully controlled image both before and after her death. These stories have created a mythical narrative that continues to circulate through informal channels, in a way that would never happen with a successful man artist.

Themes:

What is a legacy?
who creates a legacy and why?

Myth-making and the creation of (self) image
- artists’ archives, monographs, autobiographies, catalogue raisonnes

Who owns a legacy?
- who are the custodians of a legacy, and how is legacy maintained?

Legacy as power
- archives, institutions, museums and controlling the narrative

Legacy, authenticity and ‘truth’
- looking critically at legacy to find an alternative narrative

Subverting and undermining legacy
- silencing critics or criticising silences

Oral histories, gossip and legacy
- how does gossip in the archive, institution and media create and maintain myths? How can gossip also be used to reveal new narratives that create more authentic ideas of legacy?

Using Barbara Hepworth as example, participants used a range of documents, letters, oral histories, newspaper articles, books and newspapers to explore Hepworth’s legacy. By exploring different and contradictory archival sources that explore an artistic identity, participants will gain an understanding of how different narratives can emerge by using different and often conflicting sources. Looking at these documents will reveal how Hepworth created her legacy during her lifetime, how that legacy has been protected. Queering the archive will explore how legacy is undermined and enhanced both by patriarchal dominant narratives, and by gossip and oral histories to reveal different, stories about Hepworth’s life.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Other)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Archives, Gossip, Artist Legacy, Barbara Hepworth,
Subjects:	Art History & Theory History, Geography & Environment > Cornish Studies History, Geography & Environment > Heritage Studies
Department:	Falmouth School of Art
Related URLs:	Organisation
Depositing User:	Jeanie Sinclair
Date Deposited:	27 Jan 2026 14:22
Last Modified:	27 Jan 2026 14:22
URI:	https://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/id/eprint/6310

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